Chapter 983 - Rental Agency

As for officials, the principle was the same. Since the Senate effectively controlled most of Guangdong's salt fields, even official salt supply depended on them. As long as the Senate cut off the salt supply, officials would have to submit. Since they couldn't protect the salt fields, they could only accept the Senate's terms.

"If that's the case, why don't we just take over all of Guangdong's official salt sales—become tax farmers?" Guo Yi suggested. "That way we'd control all salt affairs. We ourselves would be the official salt."

"It's not the right time yet," Si Kaide shook his head. "In Guangdong, we still can't cover the sky with one hand. The Ming salt monopoly already has a large vested interest group. If we farm the taxes, either we have to shoulder all the benefits these interest groups demand, or we thoroughly kick them out."

The former was too expensive; the latter, without sufficient control, would only create too many enemies. Currently, the Senate's basic policy toward Guangdong was still focused on stability.

Si Kaide had already identified someone to serve as their agent for this new business. This person was the salt merchant from Xuwen who had first done business with the Senate: Liu Gang.

Liu Gang had long operated in the contraband salt trade in Leizhou. Among local salt smugglers, he was only a medium-sized operator. He had dealt with Salt Field Village for years, until the Gou family seized the village and cut off this channel. After Salt Field Village came under Australian control, he established relations with the Elders. By selling the superior-quality "Lingao salt," Liu Gang had made a fortune and become a major salt dealer of considerable importance in the Leizhou region.

Though he had made his fortune through the Senate, his relationship with them remained rather distant. The Senate hadn't cultivated him as a key client before—the two parties had only a simple business relationship, no different from the many other merchants who came to Lingao to trade goods.

The reason Liu Gang hadn't been "cultivated" wasn't deliberate alienation by the Colonial Trade Department. It was mainly because contraband salt smuggling was an extremely complicated business requiring an extremely complex network of relationships. Salt smuggling had long been a gray social phenomenon in Chinese history, with intertwined black and white, murky and unclear. Officials, salt merchants, and salt smugglers had tangled, complex relationships—far more than research papers and treatises could sort out. To avoid the trouble of reorganization, the Colonial Trade Department had adopted a sales approach of "supply only, don't manage channels."

But under this model, profits obviously couldn't be increased. Liu Gang's own strength was insufficient; within the complex salt smuggling network, he couldn't expand to sufficiently broad territory.

And Si Kaide was precisely looking to develop new revenue from the salt industry. The two hit it off immediately, deciding to cooperate in expanding the sales network to all of the Two Guangs and Fujian.

The only objection came from the Ma'ao Salt Consortium, which expressed that with the current labor situation, they could hardly "increase production for the nation" so dramatically—unless they received more support, from manpower to equipment, rather than just bringing more salt pans under their banner. For the Salt Consortium, they already had more than enough salt pans—so many that they couldn't operate many efficiently.

Even with low-efficiency production, even having suspended the new salt pan development plan at Yinggehai, the Planning Commission-controlled salt warehouses and fields along the Qiongzhou Strait coast still held stockpiles of sea salt sufficient for about 12 months—both for industrial chemicals and for food use. Si Kaide used this as leverage, arguing they could easily reduce inventory to within 6 months.

For this reason, Liu Gang had already moved his family, employees, and all wealth from the salt trade to Guangzhou in one fell swoop, preparing to launch major operations.

Though Liu Gang hadn't had deep cooperation with the Senate before, he was in Xuwen and understood the Australians' power quite clearly. He also knew the Australians had enormous ambitions. Watching their influence grow ever greater, becoming an Australian partner now meant future "profit prospects" beyond estimation. So his enthusiasm was very high. Si Kaide's Colonial Trade Department actually hadn't invested a single coin—all initial infrastructure investment came from Liu Gang.

Guo Yi listened silently to his introduction. Obviously, this Liu Gang was one of the commercial compradors he would command in the future. Perhaps he could be called a comprador of the new era. If major ocean merchants like Gao Ju and Li Luoyou still had somewhat more independence, then compradors like Sun Kecheng and Liu Gang were purely dependent. Their enterprises were nominally independent, but every move was actually under the Senate's control.

"Here's this Director Liu's personal file." Si Kaide opened his combination-lock briefcase and took out a document folder.

Guo Yi looked at the man's materials. A sturdy man in his thirties—the photo showed a face full of fierce intensity. Obviously being a salt smuggler wasn't easy. At home was an old mother who only knew vegetarian eating and Buddhist prayers, a wife née Zheng, and one son named Liu Xiaoguan. The document also listed his servants and employees with brief introductions.

"Currently his mother and son are both in Xuwen, under our direct control," Si Kaide said. "We didn't require him to move his son and mother to Lingao—after all, Xuwen is practically our territory now."

"Speaking of Leizhou, has the Tang Monk Plan been implemented?" Guo Yi suddenly thought of this once very hot plan.

"It won't formally begin until next year." As an Executive Committee member, Si Kaide was fairly clear on the progress of this classified matter. He lowered his voice. "I hear intelligence people are already training for it. Naturalized citizens."

"But I don't think it's very meaningful..." Guo Yi's view represented the attitude of quite a few Elders who had once been enthusiastic about it. Current Leizhou was under Lingao's full influence, with Xuwen and Haikang Counties gradually being "Qiongzhou-ized." The Senate's control over the entire Leizhou Peninsula was strengthening.

"True, but directly controlling an official is also a good option. Since we've connected with the Fushe and befriended the artillery expert, why limit him to just Leizhou? He could be transferred elsewhere. Who knows when he might prove useful." Si Kaide said. "Even if he's not useful, our investment isn't large."

Guo Yi expressed his "sincere admiration for the Executive Committee's far-sighted vision." Si Kaide laughed. "Stop the flattery. Let's discuss Guangdong's grain problem instead."

Guo Yi reported on the current status of grain collection in Guangdong.

Guangdong in the late Ming was still a grain-exporting province, with considerable commercial grain exported to Fujian each year—Fujian had long been a grain-deficient province. But due to widespread cultivation of cash crops, the grain self-sufficiency rate had already declined considerably.

However, for collecting grain, Guangdong remained the Senate's most convenient source—grain collected from the Pearl River Delta and surrounding areas could be transported to the Hong Kong base for processing via convenient waterways.

The Planning Commission, Colonial Trade Department, Agricultural Committee, and Foreign Intelligence Bureau had jointly established a specialized grain working group in Guangdong. Led by the Guangzhou Station, Guo Yi's main recent work had been acquiring grain.

Grain collection didn't rely on cash purchases—given the transmigrator group's demand for grain, they simply couldn't raise such a large sum of silver. Moreover, purchasing grain on such a scale would cause Guangdong's grain prices to skyrocket.

The Grain Working Group's method of collecting grain locally was "requisitioning"—or rather: collecting "reasonable burdens."

After the Pearl River Estuary Campaign, the Fubo Army's reputation had become thunderous throughout the Pearl River Delta. Every township it had swept through or passed had been assessed "reasonable burdens." The "reasonable burden" wasn't a one-time extortion but a long-term "tax." The collection was handled by Guo Yi's Guangzhou Station.

Though the Fubo Army had withdrawn, everyone knew that the transmigrators' warships were patrolling the Pearl River Estuary waters.

The Dachang Rice Company's Guangzhou branch was now the Senate's tax collection agency in Guangzhou. Various townships, upon receiving "notification slips" secretly delivered by Lin Baiguang's intelligence personnel, remitted their assessed "reasonable burdens" in full to the rice company by the specified dates.

Collected items included not just rice but also miscellaneous grains, cash crops, and raw silk. Silver and copper could also be submitted—received by the Delong Guangzhou Branch. Specifics depended on local conditions.

Beyond this, in the riverside towns and villages along the Pearl River that the Fubo Army had conquered and swept through, a rental agency had appeared. It carried land deeds and tenancy documents from the gentry and landowners eliminated in the Pearl River Estuary Campaign and was collecting rent.

A rental agency was a rent-collection proxy shop—very developed during the Qing, also called a tian dian [field shop]. Small and medium landlords, or city-dwelling landlords with limited local influence and not much land, often couldn't collect rent from stubborn tenants in the countryside, or only collected reduced amounts. Gradually a profession emerged: locally powerful individuals with official connections would open rental agencies to specifically handle landlords' rent collection, taking a small handling fee.

This practice resembled the pao lan hu [tax-farming households] in tax payment, except it targeted tenants rather than officials.

The appearance of rental agencies benefited small and medium landlords and became increasingly popular after the mid-Qing. Gradually they even usurped the role of managing all land tenancy, taxation, and even sales affairs, while the landlords themselves could no longer intervene and could only sit and receive rent. Eventually tenants only knew their land belonged to such-and-such agency, not knowing who their landlord actually was.

This time, the Grain Working Group had brought rental agencies into existence early in the Ming timeline. After hurried preparations, several former "grain clerks" drawn from various Hainan counties arrived in succession. With these clerks as professional staff, combined with other naturalized citizens, they formed the "Wansheng Agency" to comprehensively manage this land.

All land owners were changed to "Yuan Laoyuan," with actual management by the Planning Commission. The address listed was Bairun Village, Lingao, Qiongzhou Prefecture—precisely the special administrative village that had been created for the transmigrators back then.

(End of Chapter)