My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 377: Three Surrounded and One Missing
Liu Rong clearly remembered that there was such a joke in his previous life.

——Before the new era after the Industrial Revolution, there was nothing in the world that the feudal emperors who held great power and ruled the world could not accomplish.

If there is one, it would be a difficult math problem...

Rough words are not rough.

In the feudal era, especially in the long history of Chinese civilization, the Chinese emperors who unified the regime could really do whatever they wanted.

If you want to do good things, you can seek civil and military achievements and become a sage king whose name will go down in history;
If you want to enjoy life, you can indulge in wine and women, live a luxurious life, and experience a "wonderful" life that is unimaginable to humans.

As for the two, it is hard to say whether they are good or bad, but they are somewhat niche interests and hobbies, and the feudal emperors of China have almost played them all.

—There are carpenters who do their craft;

——There are heterosexuals who are interested in the body structure of the same sex;
——There are Taoist priests who cultivate immortality and make elixirs;
——There are also countless horrific perverts.

From the above - whether it is a sage king with lofty ambitions, a self-depraved tyrant, or these abstract kings with niche interests, it is not difficult to see that no matter what the Chinese feudal emperors want to do, they can achieve their goals to some extent.

Putting aside the extreme concept of "absolute", the will of the Chinese feudal emperors can always be implemented at a relative level.

Under this premise, if the feudal emperors of China wanted to do something bad, they only needed to say a few words to bring about a terrible disaster for the Chinese nation and even the entire historical civilization process!

On the contrary, if one wants to do something good that benefits the country and the people and will last for generations, the energy that a feudal emperor can mobilize and the support he can obtain are also rarely seen in the history of human civilization.

Take this time, for example, when Liu Rong revealed his intention to run the salt and iron industry and first informed the relevant officials in the court;

After Liu Rong clearly expressed his firm attitude of "My mind is made up, and there is no change on this matter", the important officials in the court who had originally intended to persuade him a little - at least to persuade Liu Rong not to rush into it and to make some plans and arrangements, quickly changed their attitudes.

As the saying goes: When the king humiliates his subjects, they die; when the king worries his subjects, they work hard.

Liu Rong was determined to do this. As Liu Rong and as a minister of the Han Dynasty, the outer court headed by Liu She could only work hard for what Liu Rong wanted to accomplish and the goals he wanted to achieve.

During this process, something happened that made Liu Rong feel a little relieved.

——After Liu Rong, as the crown prince, took advantage of the sudden opportunity to stabilize grain prices that year to implicitly reach the goal of state-run grain, and now as the emperor he went straight to the point and made it clear that the central court would also state-run salt and iron, the outer court headed by Liu She finally exerted their subjective initiative!
Five years ago, when Your Majesty was running a government-run rice business, the grain merchants in Guanzhong were either wiped out or their entire clans were wiped out or they changed their professions.

Now, Your Majesty wants to run salt and iron business officially, which will most likely result in the extinction of salt and iron merchants.

What about next time?

What new ideas will His Majesty come up with next time, and what kind of thing will he run next?

Although it has been repeated many times, national policies are often "once the arrow is shot, there is no turning back", starting with an extremely inconspicuous small pilot project and then gradually implemented in depth.

From this perspective, food, salt and iron are just the beginning.

In the foreseeable future, most of the Han Dynasty's bulk commodities - at least the vast majority of things related to "strategic materials" - will be included in the list of official operations and controls.

In this case, since everyone is busy with the state-run salt and iron business, why not take the opportunity to conduct a basic research and summary of other markets?
As a result, nearly half of the court in Chang'an began to get busy, summarizing the wealth of all the merchant families in the Han Dynasty, which now amounted to more than one million coins and relied on commercial trade as the main source of income.

It wouldn't matter if you didn't check, but when you did, you found a shocking revelation.

——According to the summary conclusion finally reached by the Prime Minister’s Office: In Guanzhong alone, there are an astonishing 290 merchant families whose total property value exceeds one million coins!
Among them, there are 41 families with assets exceeding 10 million, and there are seven extremely wealthy families with assets exceeding 10 million!
It is said that even the Prime Minister Liu She was so frightened that his teeth were trembling when this summary report was submitted.

More than 290 'millionaires'!
Forty-one multi-millionaires!
There are also seven extremely wealthy families with assets exceeding 10 million yuan!
What is this concept?
It is not difficult to understand this by saying a common saying in the Han Dynasty today.

——Since the death of Empress Dowager Lü and Emperor Taizong Xiaowen, the shackles that the Han Dynasty had placed on the merchant class had begun to loosen visibly.

During the reign of the previous emperor, a considerable number of merchants began to emerge in Guanzhong, with their wealth reaching over one million coins.

These people are called: Sufeng among the people.

What does this mean?

It is said that a businessman with a fortune of one million dollars can, without even doing anything, collect two hundred thousand dollars in loan interest every year with his assets of up to one million dollars.

A 20% interest rate is indeed a rare low interest rate, or even an ultra-low interest rate, in this era.

However, the same amount of 200,000 coins, if placed on a nobleman at the top of the pyramid in terms of status and position, would require the rent and taxes of at least a thousand households to barely raise.

The approximate calculation formula is: each household in the state of Chehou, that is, each farming family, owns an average of 70 acres of land.

However, among the Han Dynasty's marquis group, with the extreme exception of Lu Wan, Marquis of Chang'an, who was able to use the imperial capital Chang'an as a theoretical fiefdom, no other marquis ever received a fiefdom in Guanzhong.

Therefore, most of the fiefdoms of Chehou were in Guandong, and the farmers who received the fiefs were all farmers in Guandong. The so-called "hundred acres per household" was also the small acres commonly practiced in Guandong.

Converted into mu of Guanzhong, or mu of official standard, the average household actually owns 50 mu of land.

Fifty mu of land, with an average yield of less than three shi per mu, has an annual output value of about 150 shi of millet;
According to the current Han Dynasty tax rate of one in thirty, five stones out of the 150 dan of grain must be paid as agricultural tax.

If the farmer's land does not belong to the fiefdom of Chehou, then the five stones of grain will be handed over to the local government and eventually transferred to the treasury of the prime minister's office as central fiscal revenue;

If it belongs to the fiefdom of Che Hou, it will be "collected on behalf of" by the local government and finally handed over to Che Hou himself as the rent and tax of the fiefdom that year.

The rent and tax of five stone of millet per household, based on the grain prices in the past few years, had a total value of no more than two hundred coins.

One thousand households would amount to two hundred thousand coins.

A fief of 1,000 households was not considered too low for the Han Dynasty's marquis group - after all, there was the former prime minister, Shentu Jia, who had a fief of 500 households.

It was not considered high at all - the number of marquises with ten thousand households in the Han Dynasty could be counted on one hand, but those with fiefs of three to five thousand households also accounted for a considerable proportion.

Therefore, a fief of 1,000 households can be said to be the real threshold for the group of marquises.

As for those small fiefs of 500 to 600 households, or even those of 200 to 300 households as a symbol, they were generally not recognized as "Marquis".

This is the origin of the businessmen with millions of dollars being called "Sufeng" among the people.

——The Marquis Che had a fief of 1,000 households, and an annual income of at most 200,000 coins;
A businessman with a fortune of one million can make at least two hundred thousand dollars a year just by living off the interest.

Both have an annual income of 200,000 coins. The former is a marquis conferred by the court, while the latter is naturally "conferred" by the common people as a special group of people who are superior to others, and is called: Sufeng.

Liu She clearly remembered that when the word "Sufeng" first appeared in the Weiyang Palace, both the then Emperor Qi and the then Crown Prince Liu Rong looked unhappy. The late Emperor's face changed color when he heard it, his face was so gloomy that water could drip out of it, and he was in a bad mood. He scolded the Crown Prince Liu Rong to the point of being bloody - even though this matter had nothing to do with the current Liu Rong, who had just been the Regent for less than a year.

Now, it has only been a little over three years, less than four years, since the term "Sufeng" appeared;
The central government took advantage of the preliminary preparations for the salt and iron state-run business to conduct a census of the merchant population, and unexpectedly discovered that there were more than 290 "Sufeng" companies in Guanzhong, the base camp of the Han Dynasty?
You have to know that since Emperor Taizu Gaozu conferred the title, there were only 145 families who had made real contributions to the founding of the country!

Since the founding of the Han Dynasty, over the past fifty years, including the one hundred and fifty marquises conferred by Emperor Taizu Gao on meritorious service, the total number of marquisates conferred by the Han Dynasty to date is less than 290!
Not to mention the 40-odd families with tens of millions of wealth and the theoretical minimum annual income of the 'Sufeng plus', which is comparable to the annual rent and tax of a fiefdom of a marquis, and the 'Sufeng pro max' with seven families with millions of wealth.

The Han people have never encouraged or promoted traveling merchants!
It’s just about not suppressing or restricting too much!

Even the policy of "not over-restricting" only started during the reign of Emperor Taizong Xiaowen, which is only more than 30 years ago!
In more than thirty years, there were more than 290 "Sufeng" families in Han Dynasty?
God knows how desperate Liu She felt when he confirmed that there was no statistical error in this number.

——Since the term "Sufeng" was born, it has been less than four years, which is highly consistent with Liu She's term as prime minister!

Even if the truth is not so, there will definitely be people who link the proliferation of "Sufeng" people with Liu She's position as prime minister.

How come you, Liu She, became the prime minister, but my Han family has the "Su Feng"?

It would be fine if you just exist, you've only been the prime minister for a few years, and the "Sufeng" that was once a new word and a rare object is almost flooding in Guanzhong!

If I let you serve as prime minister for a few more years and thousands of "Sufeng" families emerge in Guanzhong, what will happen then?

If Liu She responded inappropriately - even if Liu She responded well enough, as long as the current Liu Rong did not lend a hand, the most optimistic outcome for Liu She would at least be to resign.

Combined with the social atmosphere of the Han Dynasty, a prime minister who not only failed to stay in office until the end of his life, but even stepped down due to blame, would most likely eat a piece of gold nugget that night to preserve the last bit of dignity for himself...

"Pass the message quickly!"

So, as expected, Liu She appeared outside the Weiyang Palace.

——The current situation would undoubtedly be a serious crisis for any Han prime minister.

It just so happens that Liu She was neither a marquis of military merit in the traditional sense of the Han Dynasty, nor a political talent trained by the Han Dynasty's gradually mature route of "Neishi-Grand Censor-Prime Minister".

Faced with such a crisis, someone else might have other options;

But Liu She could only cling to the Han emperor's thigh and kneel down to beg Liu Rong for protection.

What was slightly beyond Liu She's expectations was that Liu Rong's perception of the word "Sufeng" seemed to be much milder than that of the late emperor.

For a moment, Liu She even felt that Liu Rong's reaction today was visibly gentler than the reaction of the Crown Prince Regent when he heard the word "Sufeng" back then...

"Oh~"

"It's quite a lot."

...

"It has only been thirty years since our royal grandfather lifted the ban on mountains and swamps and the restrictions on crossings and passes;"

"Within just two generations at most, these merchants have built up such a fortune?"

Weiyang Palace, Xuanshi Palace.

Holding the bamboo slips that recorded the summary report, Liu Rong raised his eyes and glanced at Prime Minister Liu She, who was kneeling on the ground and trembling in the center of the hall, and muttered this indifferently.

After carefully reading the summary table in his hand, he finally raised his head and looked at Prime Minister Liu She with a smile.

"I know the Prime Minister's worries."

"It's quite a coincidence."

"——Even if the Prime Minister did not come to the palace today, I had originally planned to summon him to the Xuanshi Hall for a chat."

"Since the Prime Minister is here, I will speak first."

"After listening to my words, if you still want to complain and speak out, I will listen carefully."

When Liu She, who was originally a little flustered, heard Liu Rong's words "I know the Prime Minister's worries", he immediately calmed down.

Seeing Liu She's reaction and performing a face-changing trick in front of him, Liu Rong smiled meaningfully and shook his head.

Although Liu She was a lucky minister, he was ultimately a politician of decent level.

It's hard to tell how much of his panic-stricken behavior just now was real and how much was fake.

Liu Rong just gave Liu She a strange smile that said "I understand everything" and then went straight to the point.

"Government-run grain and rice, because the grain merchants in Guanzhong were guilty at that time, not killing them would not be enough to appease the people's anger;"

"So, in the end, the Shaofu Treasury took over the grain market and completely monopolized it."

"But salt and iron~"

"After all, the salt and iron merchants have never raised prices or shaken the country. If they were too extreme, it would ultimately harm the harmony of nature."

"——Back then, the Shaofu government managed the grain business. The reason why I was able to make up my mind to kill the grain merchants in Guanzhong was because even if they were alive, they would not be able to play the role of 'grain merchants'."

"And now, the Shaofu government-run salt and iron industry is about to begin. If we continue with the same approach of killing everyone off, it will inevitably lead to unnecessary unrest."

...

"So my intention is that the salt and iron business of the Shaofu government should be run by the government, with the main focus on self-production and self-sales, but private salt and iron merchants should also be retained, with the Shaofu government providing the secondary sales."

"——The general idea is: the salt and iron produced by private merchants cannot be sold to anyone else, but must be sold to the Shaofu treasury at market price."

"The price will be determined by the quality of the salt and iron, as well as the selling price set by the Shaofu, and some profit margin will be reserved for the Shaofu."

"In this way, even if the salt and iron merchants don't want to, they will not end up in a desperate situation."

"The Art of War says: surround three sides and leave one side open. That's the principle..."

(End of this chapter)