Xuande

Chapter 674 Hook Tactics
After this situation progressed to Liu Bei's control of Bingzhou and Youzhou, General Qian followed the footsteps of the salt interest group into Bingzhou and Youzhou, and then got involved in Jizhou.

Liangzhou fine salt is no longer the table salt produced locally in Liangzhou, but has become a production technology. After mastering this production technology, as long as there are raw materials, fine salt of the same quality can be produced, and the fine salt produced after that is called It is called Liangzhou Fine Salt.

In areas where salt production technology has advanced on a large scale, local salt cannot compete with Liangzhou fine salt, and local salt households cannot compete with salt interest groups backed by Liu Bei. Copper coins or other items of value can be exchanged for general coins.

Without the general's money, you can't buy the salt you need to eat. If you don't eat salt, you will die.

As a result, general money circulated rapidly in the local area, and Liu Bei collected all kinds of five baht coins exchanged, recast them into new general money, and continued to put them into circulation.

Therefore, in the area west of Luoyang and Bingzhou and Youzhou, in the fourth year of Jian'an, general money has become an absolutely dominant currency in circulation, and the action of good money to drive out bad money has been successfully achieved.

And because of Liu Bei's absolute power in these areas, the local government and private coinage were actually banned, and the coinage rights were owned by Liu Bei, and all coinage tools and coinage talents were under Liu Bei's control.

Although the imperial court still did not have a definite decree stipulating that all mints should be collected by the central government, the established fact has already been formed. Except for the mint controlled by Liu Bei, there is no other place capable of minting general coins.

On this basis, it is nothing more than a decree to completely end the history of coinage chaos in these areas in the future.

Three years before Jian'an, the only exception in the area west of Luoyang was Yizhou.

Because Yizhou itself is a big salt-producing state, and there are huge transportation costs, the raw materials needed for salt production are basically controlled by powerful local clans, so Liu Bei has never allowed Liangzhou salt to enter the Yizhou market, nor General money was not allowed to circulate in Yizhou.

Dealing with the big salt clan requires not only political means, but also military means. However, considering the intricate relationship of interests, Liu Bei still did not rashly announce his attack on Yizhou salt.

But it doesn't matter. After taking control of Yizhou's power at the political level, he has many ways, and overtaking on a curve is also a good trick.

So Liu Bei began to take action on the Shu brocade industry.

In itself, the production of Shu brocade was under the control of the Luoyang court, and the Eastern Han government was clear on this point.

It's just that with some changes in the situation, the production of Shu brocade gradually became a little chaotic.

When Liang Hu was the governor of Yizhou, on the surface he was a member of the eunuch group, but in fact, Liang Hu secretly took refuge in Liu Bei, and under Liu Bei's instructions, he continued to gather the authority of the Shu brocade industry.

When Xun You served as governor of Yizhou, the Shu brocade industry and production of Shu brocade in Yizhou were completely controlled by the government, directly benefiting from the management of the governor's office of the prefecture.

According to Liu Bei's order, Xun You expanded the brocade official set up by the Han government into the Shu Brocade Bureau to comprehensively manage a series of processes of Shu Brocade from planting mulberry trees to the sale of finished products. The entire industrial chain is under the control of the official Shu Brocade Bureau, and private intervention is prohibited. .

As a result, Yizhou governor's office controlled all aspects of Shu brocade production.

According to Liu Bei's request, Xun You introduced the management method of Liangzhou workshop in every link of Shu brocade production, and integrated the Shu brocade industry in a very short period of time.

Then, in the second half of the third year of Jian'an, Xun You, who fully controlled the production of Shu brocade, announced that he could only use general money to buy Shu brocade in the future.

Except for general money, you cannot buy Shu brocade in any other way. If you don’t have general money, you can go to the money exchange office set up by the government to exchange for general money, and then go to the Shu Brocade Bureau to buy Shu brocade.

Even gold and silver will not be used directly, they must be exchanged for general money at the money exchange, otherwise, they will not be sold, and it will not work for anyone to buy them.

What?
Do you have a backstage relationship?
Do you know who my background is?

General Liu Xuande!

Compare backstage with me? !

Do you have an army of tens of thousands of people?

Compared with table salt, Shu brocade is indeed not a necessity, and you will not die without it.

However, Shu brocade is a facade, a face, a symbol of social status in the upper class, and a hard demand for people to pretend to be coercive. It can also be directly used as money when trading bulk goods, and even related to sacrifices and other things.

To put it simply, Shu brocade is worth more than money.

Shu brocade is a luxury for ordinary people, if you don't have it, you don't have it, it doesn't matter.

But Shu Brocade is not a product for ordinary people. Ordinary people have never been its target customer group, and it doesn't care about ordinary people's opinions at all.

It is only for rich bureaucrats, and only for them.

It is precisely because of the consumption consensus formed by the Han Empire for a long time that the "brand premium" of Shu brocade was established, Zhuge Liang stipulated that only Shu Han's big money can be used to buy Shu brocade, so as to build the Shu Han's financial system and stabilize the Shu Han's big money. Currency value, so as to achieve the purpose of outputting inflation and cutting Cao Wei and Sun Wu's leeks.

People of insight from Cao Wei and Sun Wu also knew that Zhuge Liang was using Shu brocade to cut everyone's leeks. After Cao Pi became emperor, he wrote an article asking everyone not to buy Shu brocade and not to invest in the enemy, but is it useful?

No.

If you do not allow us to buy and use Shu brocade, it is tantamount to preventing us from eating salt.

It is absolutely impossible for Cao Pi to prevent the upper class and ruling class of this country from eating salt.

So logically, no matter what they think in their hearts, the big households in Shu have to accept the entry of general money, accept all kinds of currencies and materials used to exchange money for general money, and then use the general money to buy Shu brocade and use it back.

The so-called effective from top to bottom, after the general money circulated in the upper class, and after officials and powerful people began to use it, it quickly entered the circulation in the grassroots area of ​​Yizhou, and because of its strong currency value and exquisite production, it soon became popular. was welcomed.

I have to say that there are indeed many people who started collecting after getting the general money, doing the same things as before.

However, the consumption power of ordinary people at the lower level is inherently limited. If you collect a little general money, you will collect it. To buy Shu brocade, you must spend general money, which is still a large amount of general money, so the basic maintenance of circulation can still be achieved.

Once in and out, the balance is maintained.

Even through the control of the money exchange and some detailed operations, the existence of the money exchange allowed Liu Bei to make a small profit and made some small contributions to his pocketbook.

After Liangzhou Fine Salt and Shu Brocade were linked to Liu Bei and General Money, it was basically a matter of time before General Money was fully accepted by the upper class and ordinary people.

In Jizhou, because the Hejian Kingdom, Zhongshan Kingdom, and Changshan Kingdom all consumed Liangzhou fine salt, the general coins were also passed on, and Liu Bei ordered the withdrawal of the minting rights.

Although the remaining local counties and counties in Jizhou did not lose their minting rights, they still maintained local minting and private minting. However, because of the political cooperation between Liu Bei, the ancient literature school, and the eunuch group, Liangzhou fine salt also fully entered the market in these areas.

Facing the mature Liangzhou fine salt interest group with rich experience in struggle, and the cooperation of some local family forces, the local salt group in Jizhou was vulnerable. Soon, Liangzhou fine salt became the only salt sold in Jizhou.

With the victory of Liangzhou fine salt, supplemented by the continuous victory of Shu brocade, general money also entered the circulation area of ​​the entire Jizhou, and soon formed a comprehensive advantage over the local currency.

Based on this premise, although Liu Bei did not explicitly prohibit the private minting of Jizhou, the Jizhou area also quickly formed the exchange rules for general coins to other coins, and the rules for exchanging one general coin for several local coins were very fast It was established in the remaining counties of Jizhou.

During this process, Liu Bei continued to collect local privately minted currency, melted it, turned it into brand-new general money, and put it into the local market again.

Supplemented by more efficient and high-quality minting technology, Jizhou’s commodity market quickly formed a situation where good coins drove out bad coins—general money is the highest level of “first-class money” has become the consensus of the entire Jizhou, and people generally trust it more , I am more willing to use the general currency with strong currency value to start trade.

(End of this chapter)