Chapter 1368 I can't afford it
Usually the emperor is holding back. Under the emperor's intentional balance, it is very difficult to directly overthrow others in this way. They will go to the emperor's referee and cry, and the emperor will pull back to maintain the balance.
But now the emperor is only able to move his eyes, and is blocked by Qin Jun's retainer knights on the small island of Jiuzhouchi. No one can see the emperor, and no one can contact the emperor.
The prince and Qin Jun are on the same rope now, and their interests are connected.
So Qin Jun can act a little more unrestrainedly and aggressively now.
Cut the mess with a sharp knife.
Even if Mrs. Cui sent someone to say hello to Qin Jun, saying that Cui Yixuan is also from the Qinghe Cui family, although not from the Boling Cui family, but the same family after all, and that Cui Yixuan has also visited her cousin, expressing her willingness to resolutely Support His Royal Highness.
However, Qin Jun still kicked Cui Yixuan out of the political affairs hall, and he was about to kick him to the southwest. After Cui Yixuan gained power and paid homage to the prime minister, he helped the emperor fight against the military upstart faction headed by the Qin family. Of course, it is impossible to say a few words now If it can be offset, he must suffer a little bit, and then he will show enough sincerity.
Many people bully him that Qin Jun is nothing more than a dude, relying on the merits of his father and grandfather, even if King Qin succeeds, those people think that he is just lucky because of his boldness.
Being underestimated by others, Qin Jun doesn't really care, but now he is temporarily guarding the center, and he has to perform when he should. Otherwise, everyone will have two hearts, and accidents will easily happen.
The meeting ended, and the ministers left.
Both Dou Dexuan and Lu Chengzong lowered their proud heads.
Lu Chengzong still wanted to show his loyalty to Qin Jun, and even gritted his teeth and offered to marry Qin Jun to his baby daughter.
But Qin Jun just smiled.
"I am the concubine of the Qin family who gave birth to a concubine. How can I be the daughter of the Lu family, Fan Yang, who has five surnames and seven clans? Besides, I have already married a wife and have grandchildren. How can I divorce my wife and marry another? revile."
Lu Chengzong said helplessly that he knew that King Wu'an had already married a wife, but he was willing to give his daughter to Qin Jun as his concubine.
"Mr. Lu is really showing love. I have to ask my father about this matter first. Mr. Lu will go to Beiting first. I will write to my father for instructions first, and wait for my father to reply."
is not a rejection of a rejection.
Lu Chengzong didn't expect that he would be so ashamed to show his favor. He was angry but helpless. In front of these vulgar generals, the five surnames and seven families sometimes felt helpless.
In recent years, the five surnames and the seven families have managed to gradually gain high positions in the court, and even entered the court as ministers, but the turmoil in the court time and time again also involves them. Once they are involved, they will be skinned even if they are not dead.
The fate of the Wei family, the Xiao family, the Zheng family, and the Wang family is a lesson learned from the past. Previously, because the Lu family was implicated in the Fang family's treason case, the eldest grandson Wuji severely raped them once, and their vitality was severely injured. He also had to think more about the drastic change in the palace, which was actually the time when the throne was transferred.
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Qin Jun sent an express letter from Luoyang back to Luzon, but Qin Lang was not in Luzon.
Although he had returned from Pyunan's Mora Port, he did not return directly to Luzon. Instead, he inspected a number of commercial ports, commercial halls, and strongholds on the Qin Family Sea.
After returning to Lion Harbor, Qin Lang stopped again.
During this period of time, Qin Lang has been busy with one thing, making spice trade agreements with countries in the South China Sea. With his unremitting efforts, a preliminary agreement framework was finally reached.
Qin Lang and other countries included about 300 kinds of trade spices into the agreement catalog, and then agreed on the cultivation, purchase, trade, etc. of these spices in the future, and the spice alliance composed of ten countries will unify the agreement.
Specifically, it is actually similar to tea sales in the Central Plains today.
Central Plains' current tea sales, especially foreign trade tea, are actually very complicated and even full of monopoly.
Tea farmers in tea producing areas all over the country grow tea. There are large and small tea gardens. The big tea gardens are run by big tea farmers and tyrants. The mountains are contiguous, and they hire tea farmers and even buy slaves to manage the planting.
Then there are tea vendors. They will go to various tea gardens to collect tea and buy fresh tea every time the tea picking season comes. These tea vendors collect fresh tea from the tea gardens and transport them to some primary tea markets.
At this time, there will be larger tea vendors to collect tea. After they collect the tea, most of them will send the tea to various tea houses, that is, tea factories to be processed into raw tea.
These roughly processed raw tea will be purchased by larger tea merchants, generally large-scale and powerful tea shops, which gradually transport tea from all over the country to several major tea distribution centers across the country.
The finished tea leaves are finally sent to foreign trade ports and sold to major foreign trade tea houses. The tea houses are responsible for finding foreign customers, or finding ships to ship overseas by themselves, and are also responsible for customs declaration, taxation, etc.
So the tea market in Datang is very developed. Tea planting, tea harvesting, tea selling, tea making, and tea trading are all separate industries, with many intermediate links and severe segmentation.
Few people can achieve a one-stop package of production and sales, and all links will even be monopolized by guilds and chambers of commerce to fight for pricing power and divide channels and markets.
This is actually the result of marketization and scale-up, which is an optimization result.
In contrast, Nanyang real estate is now rich in spices, and even many spices are only produced in certain places in Nanyang, but the spices produced in Nanyang, in this spice trade, the share and benefits are very small. part.
For example, cloves, a spice, are only produced on a few small islands in the Spice Islands. In the past, some Gantoli or Javanese merchants rowed boats to the islands to find natives to buy them. The price was extremely low, and they usually bought some Grain or cloth, iron knives and some handmade goods trade.
After these spices are purchased, they will be sold in some spice markets in Java or Gantuli, and the spice merchants in the market will only resell them.
Finally, they were concentrated in several large trading ports and sold to merchants from Tianzhu or the Lion Kingdom, or Han merchants from the Central Plains. Through their hands, these cloves were transported to the Tang Dynasty in the Central Plains or to Tianzhu and Persia in the West. land.
Then Arab merchants will go to the coastal port of Tianzhu to buy cloves, and then transport them to the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea of the Arabian Peninsula by land or sea, and then cross the desert by camel to the Mediterranean Sea.
There are also some Egyptian merchants who will go to the ports in Yemen on the northern shore of the Red Sea, sell cloves from Arab merchants, and then transport them back to Egypt, where Tunisian merchants cross the Mediterranean Sea to buy cloves from Egyptian merchants. .
So the little clove, from the Spice Islands in the South China Sea to Persia, Rome, Egypt and other countries on the Mediterranean coast, has to go through many times of changing hands, and it has to be taxed countless times.
On the Spice Islands, the natives collected wild cloves and sold them to Nanyang merchants who bought them, which was cheaper than selling grain. But in the Mediterranean, cloves have the highest value-added value among spices, and when they are the most expensive, they increase by thousands of times.
The tariffs purchased along the way also accounted for more than half of the final price, or even two-thirds, and more.
Qin Lang is now uniting with these Southeast Asian countries, just to do this with the spice and tea trade in the Central Plains.
First of all, merchants from outside the ten countries are prohibited from directly purchasing spice raw materials in the territory of the ten countries in Nanyang.
For example, cloves are sold cheaper than grain, but they are sold more expensive than gold in the Mediterranean. This is extremely unreasonable.
So the alliance must first control the spice raw materials in its hands, and at the same time set a relatively reasonable purchase price to protect the interests of the spice producing areas.
Spices can only be purchased by merchants from the ten countries of the alliance, and they can be bought and sold freely under the guide price, but they are not allowed to be sold to merchants outside the alliance.
After purchasing the raw materials, the spice merchants of the ten countries of the alliance must process the spices within the ten countries to increase the value, which is the same as tea processing.
Of course, the most important part is that all processed spices are finally sold to the alliance spice foreign trade firms in the free trade port areas of the ten countries. In terms of purchase price, the alliance sets a unified guide price.
Spices can only be sold to the spice foreign trade firms in the free trade ports of these alliances. The key to this guide price is to avoid vicious competition within the alliance and suppress prices.
The exclusion of merchants from ten foreign countries also protects the members of the alliance.
To whom the spice processors want to sell their spices is their own business, and the price can be negotiated by themselves, as long as they sell to alliance members, as long as they are not lower than the guide price.
Through such an alliance, it is tantamount to controlling the three major links of spice raw materials, processing and trade in their own hands.
upstream monopoly, then the price of raw materials will naturally increase.
Plus the unified tax on spices like Datang’s salt tea is equivalent to obtaining incense from the ten countries first, paying the money for the spices and paying the tax, getting the incense, and then going to the spice warehouse to get the spices.
The spice foreign trade firm controls all the spice trade, and it doesn’t matter whether it sells to Tianzhu merchants, Arab merchants, or Egyptian merchants, Mediterranean merchants, and Datang merchants, but all firms have to be in Under the supervision and guidance of the Spice Alliance.
The pricing power of the spice trade is in the alliance, and everyone has to abide by the rules and safeguard the common interests.
This kind of thing happened in Datang, everywhere.
In the market of the city, there will be guilds or chambers of commerce for all walks of life. These guilds are formed by the participation of major shops and workshops of the same trade. They hold the industry standard setting, commodity pricing power, etc., and even regional protection. etc., to jointly safeguard the interests of the industry and fight against foreign counterparts.
This kind of guild or chamber of commerce has a more positive side, which can avoid vicious competition and disorderly competition, and can make an industry more standardized.
Nanyangkong has a lot of spices and good things, but in the end it only got a little benefit from the spice trade, and the real bulk was taken by others.
Like those farmers who grow fruits and vegetables, the vegetables and fruits grown cannot be sold at a price, but the prices in the hands of end consumers are too expensive to afford, the key is in the hands of middlemen.
(end of this chapter)