Chapter 227: Rent Collection Agency

As for the government, the same principle applied. Since the Council of Elders effectively controlled most of the salt fields in Guangdong, the supply of official salt depended on them. If the Council of Elders cut off the salt supply, the government would have to yield. Since they were unable to protect the salt fields, they had no choice but to accept the Council of Elders’ terms.

“In that case, we might as well just take over the entire official salt sales in Guangdong. How about becoming tax farmers?” Guo Yi suggested. “This way, all salt affairs would be under our control. We would be the official salt.”

“It’s not the right time yet,” Si Kaide shook his head. “We don’t have enough power in Guangdong to be completely dominant. The Ming Dynasty’s salt monopoly already has a large vested interest group. If we were to become tax farmers, we would either have to bear all the benefits demanded by this interest group, or we would have to kick them out completely.”

The former would be too expensive; the latter, without sufficient control, would only create too many enemies. Currently, the Council of Elders’ basic policy towards Guangdong was still focused on stability.

Si Kaide had already selected a person to act as an agent for their new business. This person was Liu Gang, the salt merchant from Xuwen who was one of the first to do business with the Council of Elders.

Liu Gang had been engaged in smuggling salt in Leizhou for a long time. He was only a medium-sized operator among the local salt smugglers. He had always had dealings with the Yanchang Village until the Gou family seized it, cutting off this channel. Since the Yanchang Village came under the control of the Australians, he had established a relationship with the Elders. By selling the high-quality “Lin’gao salt,” Liu Gang had made a fortune and become a major salt merchant in the Leizhou region.

Although he had made a fortune through the Council of Elders, his relationship with them was relatively distant. The Council of Elders had not previously cultivated him as a key client; their relationship was simply a business one, no different from the many other merchants who came to Lin’gao to sell their goods.

The reason they hadn’t “cultivated” Liu Gang was not intentional neglect on the part of the Colonial and Trade Department, but mainly because salt smuggling was a very complex business, requiring an extremely intricate network of relationships. In Chinese history, salt smuggling was a long-standing gray social phenomenon, with a complex and intertwined relationship between the government, salt merchants, and smugglers—far too complicated to be understood by studying monographs and papers. To avoid the trouble of reintegration, the Colonial and Trade Department had adopted a marketing strategy of only supplying the goods and not managing the channels.

However, under this model, it was difficult to increase profits. Liu Gang’s own strength was insufficient to expand his network widely enough in the complex world of salt smuggling.

And Si Kaide was just looking to create a new source of revenue from the salt industry, so the two sides hit it off immediately. They decided to cooperate and expand the sales network to the entire Liangguang and Fujian regions.

The only one who expressed dissent was the Maniao Salt Industry Association. They stated that with the current labor situation, it was difficult for them to “increase production for the country” so drastically. Unless they were given more support, from manpower to equipment, rather than just having more salt fields under their control. For the Salt Industry Association, they already had enough salt fields, so many that many could not be operated efficiently.

Even with inefficient production, and even with the suspension of the new salt field development plan in Yinggehai, the salt warehouses and salt fields along the Qiongzhou Strait under the control of the Planning Commission had accumulated a sea salt inventory sufficient for about 12 months of use, including both chemical and edible salt. Si Kaide used this as his argument, believing that the inventory could be reduced to within 6 months.

For this reason, Liu Gang had moved his family, employees, and all the wealth he had accumulated from the salt industry to Guangzhou, preparing to go all out.

Although Liu Gang had not had in-depth cooperation with the Council of Elders in the past, he was in Xuwen and knew the Australians’ strength very well. He also knew that their ambitions were great. Seeing their power grow day by day, he believed that becoming their partner now would lead to immeasurable “future prospects.” So, he was very enthusiastic. In fact, Si Kaide’s Colonial and Trade Department had not invested a single penny; the initial infrastructure investment was all provided by Liu Gang.

Guo Yi listened silently to his introduction. Apparently, this Liu Gang was one of the commercial compradors he would be commanding in the future, perhaps a new type of comprador. If the “compradors” of major ocean-going merchants like Gao Ju and Li Luoyou were more independent, then compradors like Sun Kecheng and Liu Gang were purely dependent. Their businesses were nominally independent, but in reality, their every move was under the control of the Council of Elders.

“This is the personal file of this Boss Liu,” Si Kaide opened his combination-locked briefcase and took out a file folder.

Guo Yi looked at the man’s file. A sturdy man in his thirties: his face in the photo was fierce—apparently, being a salt smuggler was not easy. He had an old mother who only knew how to be a vegetarian and chant Buddhist scriptures, a wife named Zheng, and a son named Liu Xiaoguan. The file also listed his servants and employees with brief introductions.

“His mother and son are now in Xuwen, under our direct control,” Si Kaide said. “We didn’t ask him to move his mother and son to Lin’gao. Anyway, Xuwen is basically our territory now.”

“Speaking of Leizhou, has the ‘Monk Tang’ plan been implemented yet?” Guo Yi suddenly remembered this once-popular plan.

“It will be officially implemented next year,” Si Kaide, as a member of the Executive Committee, was well-informed about the progress of this secret plan. He lowered his voice and said, “I heard that the intelligence department is already training people, and they are naturalized citizens.”

“But I don’t think it’s very meaningful…” Guo Yi’s thoughts represented the attitude of many Elders who had once been enthusiastic about it. Now, Leizhou was under the full radiation of Lin’gao, and the two counties of Xuwen and Haikang were gradually being “Qiongzhou-ized.” The Council of Elders’ control over the entire Leizhou Peninsula was strengthening.

“That’s right, but directly controlling an official is not a bad choice either. Since we’ve already connected with the Fu She and befriended the cannon expert, why limit him to Leizhou? We can transfer him to other places. He might be useful someday,” Si Kaide said. “Even if he’s not useful, our investment is not large.”

Guo Yi expressed his “sincere admiration for the Executive Committee’s foresight.” Si Kaide smiled. “Stop flattering me. Let’s talk about the food problem in Guangdong.”

Guo Yi reported on the current situation of collecting grain in Guangdong.

In the late Ming Dynasty, Guangdong was still a grain-exporting province, with a considerable amount of commercial grain exported to Fujian—Fujian had long been a grain-deficient province. However, due to the extensive cultivation of cash crops, the grain self-sufficiency rate had dropped significantly.

However, for collecting grain, Guangdong was still the most convenient source for the Council of Elders. The 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, the Colonial and Trade Department, the Agricultural Committee, and the Foreign Intelligence Bureau had jointly established a special grain working group in Guangdong, led by the Guangzhou Station. One of Guo Yi’s main recent tasks was to handle grain.

Collecting grain was not done by purchasing with cash. Given the transmigrator’s demand for grain, it was impossible to raise such a large sum of silver, and such a large-scale purchase of grain would also cause a sharp rise in grain prices in Guangdong.

The grain working group’s method of collecting grain locally was “grain levy”—or rather, collecting a “reasonable burden.”

After the Battle of the Pearl River Estuary, the Fubo Army’s fame had spread throughout the Pearl River Delta. The various towns and villages they had swept through or passed by had been extorted for a “reasonable burden.” This “reasonable burden” was not a one-time extortion, but a long-term “tax.” The person responsible for collecting it was Guo Yi’s Guangzhou Station.

Although the Fubo Army had withdrawn, it was a well-known fact that the short-hairs’ warships were patrolling the waters of the Pearl River Estuary.

The Guangzhou branch of the Dachang Rice Store was now the Council of Elders’ tax collection office in Guangzhou. After receiving the “notice” secretly delivered by Lin Baiguang’s intelligence personnel, the various towns and villages had to pay the assessed “reasonable burden” in full to the rice store before the specified date.

They collected not only rice, but also miscellaneous grains, cash crops, and raw silk. They could also pay in silver—which was collected by the Delong Guangzhou branch. The specific form of payment depended on the local situation.

In addition, in the small towns and villages along the Pearl River that had been conquered and swept by the Fubo Army, a rent collection agency appeared, collecting rent with the land deeds and rental agreements of the gentry and landlords who had been eliminated in the Battle of the Pearl River Estuary.

The so-called rent collection agency was a rent collection agent. It was very developed in the Qing Dynasty and was also called a “field store.” Generally, small and medium-sized landlords or landlords living in the city, because of their limited local power and small land holdings, often had difficulty collecting rent from recalcitrant tenants, or the rent was discounted. Thus, a new industry gradually emerged: influential figures with connections to the government would open rent collection agencies, specializing in handling rent collection for landlords, and charging a small handling fee.

This practice was similar to the “tax farmers” in tax collection, but it was aimed at tenants, not the government.

The emergence of rent collection agencies was convenient for small and medium-sized landlords and became increasingly popular after the mid-Qing Dynasty. Gradually, they even took over all matters of land tenancy, taxation, and even sales, while the landlords themselves could no longer interfere and could only sit back and collect rent. As a result, the tenants only knew that their land belonged to a certain agency, and did not know the name of their landlord.

This time, the grain working group had brought the rent collection agency into the Ming Dynasty ahead of schedule. After a period of intense preparation, several former “grain collectors” from various counties in Hainan arrived one after another. With these grain collectors as the backbone of the business, and with the cooperation of some other naturalized citizens, they formed the “Wan Sheng Hao” rent collection agency to fully manage this batch of land.

The ownership of the land was all changed to “Yuan Laoyuan,” and it was actually managed by the Planning Commission. The address was in Bairen Village, Lin’gao, Qiongzhou Prefecture—the very administrative village that had been specially created for the transmigrators.