At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 717: Suppressing Southern Xinjiang

February 63, 2rd year of the Han calendar, Nanhai County.

"Beep beep beep" a train is moving quickly towards Panyu.

In a luxurious private room, several Han clerks were calculating account books with abacus. These account books were piled up like a mountain, but they were the accounts of a trading company.

Xu Sheng asked curiously, "The Jiangnan Kuai family is not considered a big family in our Han Dynasty. How could they have so much wealth? Are the wealthy merchants in our Han Dynasty too rich?"

Xu Sheng owned a large gold mine, and his fiefdom could earn billions of dollars every year, so he could be considered worldly-wise. However, he never imagined that the assets controlled by the Kuai family were not much less than those of him, a prince.

The Kuai family owns three tea gardens in Jiangnan alone, each of which covers an area of ​​more than 10,000 acres. There are more than a dozen tea gardens related to the Jiangnan money houses, and their tea is only sold to the Kuai family. In addition, there are various food factories, canning factories, and agricultural machinery factories. This is an economic entity worth tens of billions of dollars with the Jiangnan money houses as the link. It may be a bit of an exaggeration to say that the Kuai family is omnipotent in Jiangnan, but it is no exaggeration to say that they are richer than princes.

Liu An said: "The Kuai family is not an unknown family. They followed the King of Yan in the rebellion at the end of the Qin Dynasty. Later, they felt that the King of Yan could not accomplish anything, so they went to the north to do business. In a few years, they made hundreds of millions of assets. Later, they established the Mo Nan Trading Company and made great contributions to the conquest of the desert by our great Han Dynasty. He was also named Viscount for his military merits.

Later, due to different political views, he had a disagreement with the Mohist master. In order to avoid disaster, he set up a new family business in the south, and also established the Xiangjiang Academy and founded the School of Emphasis on the People. It is also a not-so-small school in the Han Dynasty, and has a great influence on the officials, businessmen, and academic circles in Jiangnan. "

Xu Sheng frowned and said, "Such powerful people should have been suppressed long ago. Why are they still allowed to develop?"

Lei Bei said: "When Jiangnan was developed, the Kuai family also made great efforts. The court would not abandon them. In addition, the Kuai family has always been closely connected with the Jiangnan officialdom. Jiangnan wanted to develop industry, so they built a car factory, and it has developed well. This year, it is said that tens of thousands of cars and hundreds of thousands of various agricultural machinery were produced. Jiangnan finally has such a large trading company. If the local area wants to develop, it must rely on them, so naturally they will be given certain policy preferences."

Xu Sheng said: "No wonder the court sent the tax inspector to Jiangnan this time. The court's rule over Jiangnan is indeed a little weak."

Xu Shao was led by Chen She, and Xu Sheng was also led by someone, namely the tax inspector Ling Zhidu, and their purpose of this trip was to inspect taxes in Jiangnan.

The power of the Tax Inspectorate of the Han Dynasty is unique among the Nine Ministers, and it is the only department that has its own army.

As long as the tax inspector believes that there is something wrong with the trading company, he has the right to mobilize soldiers to seal off the factory and check the accounts. As long as there is a problem with the accounts, a fine of more than ten times is considered a light punishment. The most serious punishment is that the factory will go bankrupt and the whole family will be exiled overseas.

There was no one in the business community of the Han Dynasty who was not afraid of them. The reputation of the tax collectors in the Han Dynasty was such that they could cure a child's night cry. In contrast, their reputation was not very good, and they were considered the Jinyiwei of the Han Dynasty.

Of course, the tax inspectors of Han Dynasty did not care. As long as they entered this system, they would be outliers among the Han Dynasty. They were the only Han officials whose property would be checked. In addition, what they did was hated. If they made a mistake, someone would definitely fall into the pit and end up miserably.

Of course, relatively speaking, their welfare benefits are also the best, with high incomes, high pensions, and their food, clothing, housing and transportation are almost all taken care of by the Han court.

This time, Zhidu personally led the elite tax collectors to Jiangnan in order to clean up the business environment in Nanhai County and let the merchants in Nanhai understand the strictness of the Han Dynasty's laws. The merchants in Jiangnan just warned them in passing, letting them know that Jiangnan is not a lawless place, and they should do business honestly and not get too involved with those princes.

After the military exercise in the 60th year of the Han Dynasty, Zhao Tuo led his confidants to the Oil Peninsula, and Mei Xuan also led his family to the Oil Bay. With these two families taking the lead and the rich oil in that area, the court also laid a certain foundation, and more than a dozen princes in the south of the Yangtze River followed suit and moved to their own vassal states. This can be said to have laid a good foundation for the Han Dynasty to rule the south of the Yangtze River.

The regions with the strongest ruling power of the Han Dynasty were Guanzhong and Jianghuai, which were also the richest regions in the entire Han Dynasty. The second most powerful region was the Central Plains and Hebei region. These regions were the source of Chinese civilization, and their county systems were the most advanced, and their recognition of the Han Dynasty court was the highest.

Finally, there are Shuzhong, Longxi, Yanliao regions. These regions need financial transfers from the Han Dynasty court all year round in order to build infrastructure such as railways, roads, and bridges. Under the current fiscal transfer system of the Han Dynasty, these regions benefit the most and naturally recognize the court.

The situation in the south of the Yangtze River was a bit more complicated. There was Kuaiji County, which had the largest population, the most prosperous cities, and the richest citizens in the Han Dynasty. There were also Lingling County and Wuling County, which were poor but had many people. There were also Lujiang County and Changsha County, which had many princes. There was also the Baiyue region, which had been incorporated into the Central Plains for less than a hundred years. The various forces of princes, tribes, powerful people, nobles, and merchants were intertwined, leading to an extremely complicated situation in the south of the Yangtze River.

In the 61st year of the Han Dynasty, the Han Dynasty court re-established Nanhai County and appointed Deng Tong as the governor of Nanhai County. The southern part of the Han Dynasty began to be divided into counties on a large scale.

In order to win over the hearts of the people, the imperial court not only did not take any major actions in the south in the past two years, but also provided billions of dollars every year to build infrastructure such as railways and roads, and even established a heavy industrial center in Panyu.

High-quality anthracite was transported from the South Central region to build a large power station, and then an electrolytic aluminum plant was built. Airships were manufactured using aluminum alloys, and the largest airship manufacturing plant in the entire Han Dynasty was established.

The aviation industry in the Han Dynasty is booming, and all counties are building airship fields. The high-altitude economy has become another economic hotspot that the county governors of the Han Dynasty are competing for. Once the airship fields are built, a large number of airships are naturally needed.

The princes of the Han Dynasty also liked airships very much, especially for overseas princes. Having an airship was not only a symbol of their status, but also very convenient for daily travel. When they came to the Han Dynasty to attend the princes' meeting or take a vacation, it would take 10 days or half a month for a ship to reach a place, but an airship only needed one or two days.

There are also wealthy businessmen in the Han Dynasty who are looking at the high-altitude economy. The Han Dynasty has a lot of good things, but they are difficult to sell due to the distance. Airships can travel through mountains and rivers, and are currently the fastest means of transportation in the Han Dynasty. They perfectly meet the needs of these businessmen.

The demand was so great that the Panyu airship factory received orders for 120 airships as soon as it was established.

The price of the Han Dynasty's airships ranged from 1000 million to 3000 million coins, and the total cost of these orders exceeded 20 billion. For the South, this was an unprecedented large factory, which greatly boosted the South's economy and calmed people's hearts.

But Deng Tong soon discovered that although the princes had left, the powerful and tribal forces in Nanhai County were too strong.

The Han Dynasty had a complete set of laws to protect craftsmen, and all kinds of taxes such as industrial and commercial taxes and asset taxes were very complete. The powerful people in the Han Dynasty were dealt with many times. Those who were dishonest, evaded taxes, cheated, and were arrogant and domineering were all banished overseas by the Han Dynasty.

The first thing the newly emerged merchants and powerful forces of the Han Dynasty did after they grew stronger was to read the Han laws to know what they could and could not do, and what the consequences would be!
The laws of the Han Dynasty were very friendly to the common people, but not so friendly to them. Exile overseas was not a threatening word, but something they encountered frequently. In every county chamber of commerce, there would be one or two friends who were exiled overseas every year. Under such pressure, they were naturally trembling with fear and did not dare to break the law.

And if you want to end this life of fear, tax inspection also costs money. There are millions of trading companies of all sizes reported by the Han Dynasty. If all of them are strictly inspected, the tax collectors will die of exhaustion and still not be able to check them all.

However, the imperial court targeted large companies and let small ones go. All companies with assets of over 60 million were on the tax supervision order's list. The more assets they had, the higher up the list they were at, and the stricter the supervision. If a trading company on the tax supervision order's list dared to mess around, they would be caught and punished with a fine of more than ten times the amount, which would make these businessmen heartbroken. In serious cases, their entire family would be exiled to expand the territory of the Han civilization to pay for their sins. When a trading company reaches a certain size, it is best to do business honestly. This has been the experience and lesson of the Han business community over the past years.

But Panyu was at least 1 miles away from Chang'an City, and it was also the territory of a vassal state. In order to appease the people, Zhao Tuo could not enforce strict industrial and commercial laws like the imperial court. Moreover, most of the landlords, wealthy merchants, and businessmen in Nanhai State were either his relatives or his trusted relatives. To put it bluntly, they also had a share in the conquest of Nanhai State.

Everyone has bought some property, and you, Zhao Tuo, have the nerve to use taxation to plunder their wealth even more!
Zhao Tuo was also helpless about such things. They were originally an alliance of weak people. They could not compare with the Han Dynasty, which had won the kingdom by defeating heroes all over the world.

The Han Dynasty could remove the feudal lords if it wanted to, relocate the feudal lords if it wanted to (of course, the price still had to be paid.), exile the powerful if it wanted to, and kill the merchants if it wanted to. But he couldn't do this, and he didn't dare to do so. This led to the South being in an environment where the nobles oppressed the powerful, the big fish ate the small fish, and the strong preyed on the weak. So the situation in Nanhai County is that productivity has entered the era of secondary industrialization, but the production relationship is still in the feudal era.

There are factories that rely on each other for life, tyrants who occupy the land as kings, the Baiyue tribes who rob people on the road, and even bandit forces.

Deng Tong was stunned when he knew this. Rangers and bandits, what ancient terms, in the Han Dynasty, everyone knew to open a trading company to clean up their own wealth, and trading companies knew to invite Feng Shui masters to destroy their opponents' Feng Shui, regardless of whether it was useful or not, but this situation was different. The Nanyue Kingdom was still playing with rangers and bandits, this version was too backward.

To sum it up in one sentence, the Nanyue Kingdom was dominated by feudal forces, and every hilltop and territory was occupied by someone. If the prefect Deng Tong wanted to move a chair, there would be someone to oppose him.

In the beginning, Deng Tong wanted to open an airship factory, but because he occupied too much land, the local tyrants gave him face openly, but secretly ordered the farmers to ask for exorbitant land fees.

The convoys transporting spare parts were often robbed by tribes, who demanded payment in the form of tea money or tolls. The villages where the Han immigrants came from still had some concept of the rule of law. They knew that robbery was wrong, so they would block the way and force the drivers to buy some worthless mountain products at dozens of times the price.

At first, he tolerated these things for the sake of the construction of the industrial zone. However, he did not expect that Deng Tong's actions were seen as weak and incompetent by the local tyrants, who became even more unscrupulous and extended their hands to the industrial zone. They wanted to establish a contract labor system, saying that without their introduction, the industrial zone was not allowed to recruit craftsmen on its own, and they had to recruit their people to work as managers in the factory. The craftsmen's salary also had to be given to them as management fees.

If these conditions were agreed, they would help the industrial zone maintain its normal operation. If these conditions were not agreed, they would find a way to stop the court's industrial zone from operating.

This condition made Deng Tong laugh. The powerful people in the south didn't know that the world belonged to the Han Dynasty, let alone what the Mohists were doing. They reached out to the craftsmen and bullied them in front of him.

On the one hand, Deng Tong was anxious for the elites of the Mohist school to go south, so that they could form a factory protection team, beat up the ruffians raised by the local tyrants, and drive them out directly.

He then reported to the court, saying that the local landlords and powerful forces in Nanhai County were too strong. If the court wanted to establish a stable rule, it needed to eliminate a number of local powerful forces.

The Han Dynasty was never soft-hearted in suppressing local forces. After receiving Deng Tong's memorial, the emperor ordered the Imperial Censor, the Supreme Court, and the Taxation Bureau to form a joint investigation team to go south. He also ordered the Zhennan General's Office to send a battalion of soldiers to be transported by the South China Sea Fleet to Panyu to suppress the local powerful forces. This was considered to be escalating the internal contradictions into the contradictions between the enemy and us.

"Beep, beep!" The moving train slowly stopped. The passengers on the train were puzzled when they saw the train stopped. They looked out the window and asked what happened.

Xu Sheng and the others waited for a while, and Zhidu entered their private room and said, "We'll get off here and take a bus to Nanhai County."

Liu An asked, "Sir, what happened?"

"The bridge ahead collapsed, and the train can't pass temporarily. We can only take a car to Nanhai County." Zhidu said calmly.

Lei Bei asked nervously, "Maybe it was the tyrants in Nanhai County who did this. They want to stop you from going to Nanhai County."

Zhidu shook his head and said, "I don't know."

Xu Sheng said: "Let's go to the front to check the situation."

Liu An persuaded him, saying, "A gentleman should not stand under a dangerous wall. Your Majesty is of noble status, so you should put your own safety first."

Xu Sheng said: "We have hundreds of elite tax inspectors here, so why should we be afraid of the local tyrants? It's a good opportunity to go and see how good their methods are and prepare for the response in advance."

Zhidu thought it was an accident and there would be no danger, so he said, "It's good to take a look."

So several people went to the site of the accident, which was a dual-use railway and highway bridge. The river was not wide, only a few dozen meters, and the bridge was not long, less than a hundred meters. It was a very ordinary concrete bridge.

At this time, the lower part of the bridge where cars pass has been broken, and below is a heavy truck soaked in water. There are also several trucks beside the bridge, and the trucks are full of cargo. They are obviously a convoy.

"We are from the imperial court. What's the situation ahead?" Xu Sheng asked, revealing his identity.

The inspector who maintained order said, "The car was overloaded. This kind of heavy truck can only carry ten tons of cargo, but they loaded more than 30 tons of cargo. And this bridge was built in the early years. At that time, horse-drawn carriages could not even carry one ton of cargo. The bridge was designed to carry 10 tons. It was originally safe for horse-drawn carriages to pass, but now a 30-ton truck has come and directly collapsed the bridge. The two drivers below were drowned, and the people were also crushed by the cargo they were transporting. The bodies could not be pulled out. They really brought this upon themselves."

The Han Dynasty's industrial upgrading was very fast, far exceeding the normal speed in history. This led to a very rapid pace of urbanization in the Han Dynasty. Although there was a time traveler like Xu Fan, and the roads, bridges, rails, ports and other infrastructure were more than 10 times larger, even so, it still could not keep up with the speed of Han Dynasty's development. The master carpenter who built the bridge at the time could never have imagined that a vehicle could pull 30 tons of cargo. It was no surprise that the current accident occurred.

Xu Sheng found the driver of the car team who had been controlled and asked: "This car can only carry 10 tons of cargo. Why are you pulling 30 tons of cargo? Don't you know this is very dangerous?"

A driver said in a panic: "This is what our boss asked us to do. They want us to ship the goods faster. We don't have enough trucks, so we have to overload them."

Zhidu said coldly: "I'm afraid you also want to make more money. Overloading three times is equivalent to making three times the money per trip."

The drivers looked at each other and lowered their heads again.

Zhidu said angrily, "The total amount of goods to be transported is fixed at a certain time. Have you ever thought that if you keep overloading like this, those who ask you to transport goods will lower the cost of transportation. Then you will bear the risk yourself, and you won't make any money. Instead, you will squeeze the triple market to only 1/3. You are destroying your own future jobs."

"We don't want this, we just want to make more money." The drivers' voices became lower and lower as they spoke.

Zhidu and the others could only leave with regret.

In the car, Zhidu said: "The automobile transportation industry is a new industry. Since the advent of trucks, the transportation volume has not only increased by more than ten times that of horse-drawn carriages, but the time has also been reduced by several times. Many seasonal fruits and vegetables that were not profitable before can now make money. Therefore, the automobile transportation industry in Dahan has been very prosperous in recent years. However, every new industry in our Dahan is chaotic and disorderly when it first breaks out. The chaos caused by the automobile transportation industry is particularly serious. These dozens of tons of cars have crushed highway bridges more than once."

Zhidu inspects taxes in various parts of Dahan all year round, and this kind of thing is often encountered. There are really few roads that can withstand a 30t truck.

(End of this chapter)