Chapter 510: Setting Sights on the Huizhou Merchants

Zhu Youxiao could understand it well enough—the attention-grabbing power of walking around with a top-tier star versus a third-tier star was naturally incomparable.

Ignoring the stares of these people, Zhu Youxiao walked straight into the Imperial Academy with a smile on his face.

Although this scene before him was not what Zhu Youxiao had hoped for, nor what he wanted to see, it didn't matter—coming here today meant keeping a cheerful mood.

Matters would be dealt with soon.

Although Zhu Youxiao's gaze wasn't on these people, they were all watching him, and some even began inquiring around, wanting to know just what his identity was.

But no one recognized Zhu Youxiao, and for the moment, no one knew who he was.

Under such circumstances, with the other party's identity unknown and his entourage clearly impressive—obviously someone of no ordinary standing—naturally no one came forward to cause trouble.

Zhu Youxiao was happy to be left alone, strolling through the Imperial Academy in Yangzhou with his attendants.

Speaking of which, the environment of the Imperial Academy in Yangzhou was excellent—a great deal of money must have been spent when it was built.

But that was only fitting, after all, this place was built by the salt merchants of Yangzhou. In the Great Ming, who had the most money?

None other than these salt merchants. And this was the place they used to win people over, so naturally they had to spare no expense. Although it now belonged to the court, the land and buildings were still theirs.

Walking forward, Zhu Youxiao turned to Wei Changsheng beside him and asked, "When the academy reform happened here back then, did any trouble arise? Were they really willing to hand it over?"

"To answer Your Majesty, they were very cooperative," Wei Changsheng said hastily.

Although Wei Changsheng didn't know why, he knew what His Majesty meant by asking, so he simply stated the result directly.

But on this matter, Wei Changsheng really had no say—at that time he had only just arrived in Yangzhou, and there were many things about the city he didn't understand.

Never mind the matters above; Wei Changsheng hadn't even figured out the matters below. The affairs of the upper echelons were simply not something he could investigate; he only knew a bit of the basic situation.

At the time, after the court's people arrived, these salt merchants of Yangzhou agreed very readily and directly presented the academy as an offering.

In fact, they were extremely cooperative, and throughout the reform process, they helped with whatever difficulties arose; even when there were no difficulties, they would proactively find things to do, making the academy reform go very smoothly.

Wei Changsheng hadn't sensed anything unusual then—after all, at that time, not being in that position, he didn't concern himself with its affairs.

But now it was different. After this long period of training, having stayed in Yangzhou for so long, and being sufficiently familiar with every level of the city, Wei Changsheng had caught a whiff of something out of the ordinary. There was definitely something he didn't know about in all this.

Zhu Youxiao nodded and asked, "Then do you know who calls the shots here?"

Wei Changsheng knew what the Emperor was asking—in plain terms, who among these salt merchants had the final say.

Wei Changsheng said, "To answer Your Majesty, on the ground of Yangzhou, there are three largest salt merchants. One is the Wang family of Shanxi, whose ancestors were already in the salt business."

Zhu Youxiao knew this Shanxi Wang family very well—they were in fact the family of Wang Chonggu, the former Governor-General of the Three Borders. The family had several brothers, quite a few of whom held official posts, and they controlled the entire market of the Three Borders region.

You see, back when the Great Ming was founded, the troops stationed in those places all had to have grain shipped in. The court doing it itself incurred heavy losses and low efficiency, so it was handed over to merchants.

At that time, there was a very good policy: merchants delivered grain, exchanged it with the garrison troops for salt certificates, then took those certificates to the local salt fields to buy salt, and sold it afterward.

In this process, the court obtained tax revenue, the border troops obtained grain, and the salt merchants obtained salt certificates and made money—a win-win-win situation. This was the policy Zhu Yuanzhang had formulated back then.

But people are never satisfied with what they have. The salt merchants didn't want to do it this way—transporting grain over there was too tiring. So they thought of a second method: they acquired a large tract of land at the border, hired people to farm it, and each year harvested the grain directly and delivered it to the border troops, then took their salt certificates to buy salt.

This behavior caused the border population to surge and the land to be greatly developed. This was the so-called merchant colonization of the time, and it worked very well.

But later, the salt merchants were still unsatisfied—this was too time-consuming and the profits too small. So they did something else: they lobbied officials and the court to let them buy salt directly with silver.

In plain terms, they abandoned the border troops—no more grain for the border—they would just give silver to the court directly.

These salt merchants converted what was originally a service to the court into a purely commercial enterprise, and they thoroughly latched onto the nation's body to suck its blood, becoming a swarm of parasites with no contribution whatsoever.

And to achieve this goal at the time, they bribed court officials, nobles, and imperial relatives on a grand scale to get them to agree to these terms.

The one who agreed to this was the famed Hongzhi Emperor—the father of the Zhengde Emperor—the ruler known as the benevolent sovereign.

Beyond that, these salt merchants also urged the Emperor, claiming that buying salt with silver would increase the court's tax revenue. But in truth, this money was squeezed out of the border troops—the salt merchants took the lion's share and gave the court a small portion.

Additionally, imperial relatives and nobles hoarded salt certificates severely. They took the certificates into their own hands and then resold them to the salt merchants. Doing nothing at all, they skimmed off a huge sum.

The imperial relatives and nobles lobbied the Emperor, cried poverty, begged for salt certificates, then turned around and sold them. It was from that time onward that the borders decayed, the salt merchants sucked blood madly, and the nobles and imperial relatives plundered without restraint—the state's finances became even more unable to make ends meet.

In the end, when the civil unrest broke out in Shaanxi, the troops there had no grain to eat and directly rebelled.

If the original policy had still existed, with people delivering grain there, they would have shipped grain from the south rather than abandoning the northwest.

The policy Zhu Yuanzhang formulated continuously strengthened communication, stabilized the grain market and the borders, and even expanded the border population. It was only later that all of this was discarded.

Under such circumstances, Zhu Youxiao naturally held these salt merchants in contempt.

Originally, Zhu Youxiao had considered restoring Zhu Yuanzhang's old policy, but now he had no such thoughts. These people might as well just be eliminated—when it came to making money, he'd do it himself.

The Wang family of Shanxi was the primary target this time.

The Wang family had members in officialdom and monopolized the market; because they monopolized the market, they had money, and with that money they extended their reach into the salt-producing regions. That was how the Shanxi merchants made their grand advance into the Lianghuai salt industry, putting down roots in Yangzhou.

"Besides the Wang family, who else is there?" Zhu Youxiao asked again.

"Besides the Wang family, there's the Chen family of Shaanxi. These two families lead the Shanxi merchant guild, but in Yangzhou, their strength isn't the greatest. The strongest is the Huizhou merchant guild."

Ever since the fifth year of Hongzhi, when the court permitted the use of silver to buy and sell salt, the Huizhou merchants had risen.

Among the Huang, Wang, and Wu clans of Huizhou, many people grew wealthy in the Yangzhou salt trade, with assets ranging from hundreds of thousands up to a million, and they were renowned throughout the realm for being "the foremost salt magnates under heaven."

Although the Shanxi and Shaanxi merchants also transformed from border merchants into interior merchants, rushing to Yangzhou to compete with the Huizhou people for profit, they were far from their homeland and lacked the strength to match—their status had no choice but to yield beneath the Huizhou merchants.

In the forty-fifth year of Wanli, when the court implemented the gang method, the Huizhou merchants seized even more of this profit. In the blink of an eye over all these years, they had firmly established themselves in Yangzhou, and no one could shake their position.

Zhu Youxiao nodded. The famed Huizhou merchants, eh.

Huizhou merchants didn't refer to merchants from Anhui Province, but rather merchants from Huizhou Prefecture, encompassing the six counties of She, Xiuning, Wuyuan, Qimen, Yi, and Jixi—that is, the ancient Xin'an Commandery.

Huizhou sat at "the head of Wu and the tail of Chu," a marginal zone with tall mountains and dense forests, varied terrain, and late development.

Before the Han dynasty, its population was small, but after the late Jin, late Tang, and late Song—the three great migration waves in Chinese history—large numbers of northerners moved to Huizhou in southern Anhui.

With a large population and lots of mountains but little arable land, what could be done?

Going out to do business was one way out.

Under such circumstances, they chose to leave home and engage in commerce, relying on their spirit of hard work and endurance to build a great enterprise. If you looked at their entrepreneurial history, it was both moving and tragic—a story written in blood and tears. To win a future for themselves, they worked desperately hard.

But in the end, the dragon slayer became the dragon. Once they became capital, their stance changed.

During the struggling years, things might have been better, but once they became capital, they began to suck blood. That was what the Huizhou merchants were like now.

Of course, those who didn't deal in salt were much better off. After all, the Huizhou merchants had many businesses—for instance, those who made Chengxintang paper had been at it since the Tang dynasty, and even now, it wasn't something ordinary people could afford.

Besides these, there were also those who worked with raw lacquer, and those who made ink. Huizhou ink was considered the finest of its kind.

Zhu Youxiao naturally wouldn't interfere with such businessmen—on the contrary, he would encourage them. In future overseas trade, these would become the brands of luxury goods, the very things meant to rake in money across the Greater Chinese cultural sphere.

A paper brand called Chengxin Hall had existed since the Tang dynasty. It wasn't quite said to be worth its weight in gold, but it was close enough.

Zhu Youxiao strolled along with his hands clasped behind his back, listening to Wei Changsheng speak of various matters.

But Zhu Youxiao soon understood that understanding these things held little real meaning. Whoever needed to be dealt with would still be dealt with—they were merely targets to strike at, a matter of setting an order, or rather, drafting a list.

As he walked, Zhu Youxiao suddenly thought of something else.

He turned his head to look at Wei Changsheng and asked, "Who sponsors this academy? Huizhou merchants or Shanxi merchants?"

"Your Majesty, it is the Huizhou merchants. These people call themselves Confucian merchants, and they pay more attention to such matters than the Shanxi merchants do." Wei Changsheng replied respectfully, his tone cautious.

Wei Changsheng knew that His Majesty had likely set his sights on the Huizhou merchants, and that was not a good thing.