Chapter 391: Currency War (Part 1)

At the end of the meeting, the three of them left and Li Qing'an sat quietly in the room alone. He needed to sort out the countermeasures of Hexi again. On the way back from Xinde, he had been thinking about this matter. The Hexi Incident was an emergency in his ascension. Although this incident caused him losses, lost Gan and Suzhou and 20,000 troops, and also broke his plan to plunder Tianzhu, this incident was a mirror that reflected his weakest link.

His bureaucratic foundation was too weak to effectively control the local area. Everything was controlled by military control. When he was not in Anxi, Anxi's power agency lost control over Hexi. Now the danger of Hexi broke out. Where will it be next time? Beiting, Kucha or Hezhong, Li Qing'an actually felt powerless.

This lack of strength is not because his military strength is insufficient. On the contrary, his military strength is sufficient, but because his soft power is insufficient. To use an image metaphor, he is like a strong man, looking tall and burly, with a developed muscle, but his inner physique is extremely poor and unable to last long. The coordination and flexibility of eyes and ears are not enough. Once someone grasps his weakness, he will have no way to deal with it.

Li Yu had a great time this time. He replaced the Hexi chief general as an emperor, and replaced the unknown Li Feishouyu with Cheng Qianli with Anxi background. Everything has not changed. Hexi still belongs to Anxi in name, and he was in charge of Li Qing'an, but the actual control has changed. Therefore, there are voices of support inside and outside the court, and public opinion is biased towards Li Yu. His administrative authority has no power to fight back at all during this Hexi Incident, and even requires his own wife to come forward.

They did not effectively control Hexi, which was the weakest point of him, Li Qing'an. There was no strong administrative authority. It was not a long-term plan to maintain it by force alone. The way was to cultivate both inside and outside.

What he lacks most now is talents. After Li Yu ascended the throne, many seconded mainland officials and scholars returned to the Central Plains one after another. Most of their reasons were missing their family. Anxi was too far away from the Central Plains, and life was inconvenient. Li Qing'an also knew that Anxi was remote and could not attract talents. This was actually just an appearance. In essence, it was his lack of legitimacy. Although he had the strongest military force, although he was already the King of Zhao of the Tang Dynasty. Although he was built after it was completed, this was just Li Yu's fear of his strength and was forced to recognize his identity, rather than a natural existence. His influence on the scholars of the Central Plains was not strong enough. The bureaucracy and traditional powerful forces in the court were not able to truly accept him.

This is the real reason why there were never a large number of talents from Central China who came to join him. His legality was insufficient and he could not attract a large number of excellent intellectuals to come to Anxi. There are rumors that Yan Zhuang was jealous of talented people and could not tolerate talented people, which made talents not come to Anxi. Li Qing'an did not agree with this statement. Yan Zhuang could not stop the enthusiasm of scholars to join him. Liu Yan was the best example. The fundamental reason was that the people in Central China did not believe him and were prejudiced against him and Anxi.

From this perspective, he thanked this incident for allowing him to calm down and reflect on his shortcomings and weaknesses. Otherwise, he would not know when he would discover his own problems. However, the situation of insufficient talents cannot be changed in a day or two, and it will take a period of time, especially when he entered the power center of the Tang Dynasty to eliminate the prejudice of the world against him.

This can only be put in the future. It is urgent. He needs to teach Li Yu a lesson before the Dashi Army counterattacks on a large scale. He must let Li Yu understand that offending him will make him achieve nothing.

He has already considered the plan to teach Li Yu a lesson. It is time to implement it.

Li Qing'an picked up a thick booklet, which is Anxi's latest coin minting report. Since seizing the Bosishan Silver Mine, Li Qing'an ordered the expansion of coin minting furnaces. The number of coin minting furnaces has expanded from the first three to fifty-eight. Hundreds of skilled craftsmen were recruited from the mainland, plus apprentices and laborers, and the number of people involved in coin minting has exceeded 4,000. For this reason, the coin minting office was established, which is the functional department of Anxi after the Weapons Agency.

The hundreds of thousands of kilograms of silver transported from Bosishan are transformed here into pieces of exquisitely crafted Anxi silver dollars, and then sent to the Central Plains for countless materials.

In the past two years, the silver dollars exported to the hinterland of the Tang Dynasty have reached 1.5 million, and most of them have flowed into the market. There are more than 400,000 still in the Anxi Guesthouse in various places. There are nearly one million silver dollars in the Shattered Leaf Vault. It really takes him some thought about how to transport these million silver dollars to Chang'an.

At this time, I asked the foreign soldiers to report: "General, the order of the Changfu is here."

"Let him in!"

The door was pushed open, and Chang Jin walked into Li Qing'an's room. Last year, Li Qing'an established Anxi's intelligence agency - Anxi's Interior Affairs Office, which was directly under his control. Anxi's Interior Affairs Office was actually transformed from the Han and Tang dynasties. After Li Huichun's death, Li Qing'an completely reorganized the Han and Tang dynasties, from a private secret organization, and changed it to the official functional department of Anxi. The Yinlong Society did not interfere with Li Qing'an's reorganization. On the contrary, their support for the Han and Tang dynasties could play a greater role. Of course, the premise is that the Han and Tang dynasties must serve Li Qing'an.

Chang Jin was the first official magistrate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in charge of the 8,000 members of the Han and Tang dynasties in various parts of the Tang Dynasty, and was directly under the jurisdiction of Li Qing'an.

"See General!"

After always giving a gift, Li Qing'an put the report back on the table and smiled and said, "You have sent Hexi information this time and should be rewarded."

Chang Jin said a little ashamed: "We did not receive any information from Li Yu's secret order, which led to the rebellion of Meng and Luo in the end, and their subordinates were ashamed of the word "commendation".

"This is indeed a shortcoming point of the Interior Ministry. We need to obtain information from the palace. An Lushan has done a good job in this regard. You need to spend a little money."

"I will immediately send a letter to Hu Yunpei by following the order."

Li Qingan smiled, then took out an order and handed it to Chang Jin, "I have an extremely important matter to the Office of the Internal Affairs to do. This matter is of great importance. I will implement it one by one according to the requirements in my letter. You must not be careless or slack."

Chang Jin took the letter, put it carefully in his arms, bowed and said, "The General has nothing else to do, so his subordinates have surrendered."

"Wait a minute!" Li Qingan called him again.

He pondered for a moment and asked, "Is anyone asking about Li Yan in the Hidden Dragon Society?"

Chang Jin sneered and said, "No one cares about Li Yan's life or death. He killed Li Huichun. Even if he dies, he cannot atone for his sins. However, Luo Pinfang is asking about his wife's whereabouts. After all, he is his own daughter, so he is very worried."

"Tell him for me that she is also my biological mother. I have followed her wishes to place them and their son in a small town in Jiangnan. She lives well and is very quiet. She no longer wants to ask about the matter of Saoye anymore, so please don't worry."

"Yes! My subordinates will tell Luo Pinfang."

After pausing, Chang Jin whispered again: "That Li Yan, it's better to get rid of him to avoid future troubles."

Li Qingan shook his head, "He is already crazy and has no meaning. Let's save his life and spend his old age with his mother!"

Chang Jin sighed secretly and said, "That subordinate will say goodbye!"

"Go! The things I have to hand you over immediately and you must not delay."

"Yes!" Chang Jin turned around and left.

At this time, Li Qing'an took out a silver dollar and turned around on the table. Looking at the spinning silver dollar, a sarcastic smile appeared in Li Qing'an's eyes and said to himself: "Li Yu, you think things too simple."

He immediately wrote another handwritten letter, sealed the envelope, and handed it to his personal soldiers, saying, "Send someone to Beiting immediately and hand it over to Cui Ganyou!"

The Tang Dynasty's Guest House was the prototype of the later bank. It flourished in the Middle Tang Dynasty, and it charged fees for deposits and loans to collect interest rates. It was the most profitable business in the Tang Dynasty. Those who can open counters have a certain background and backstage, and they are well-capitalized and have a lot of money to save money. Even when the imperial court was in a tight position, they had to borrow money from the counters. Therefore, although the Tang Dynasty Guest House was in business, its influence on the government should not be underestimated.

There were cabinet shops everywhere in the Tang Dynasty, but the seven cabinet shops in the Tang Dynasty, except for the Baiji Cabinet in Yangzhou and Yangji Cabinet in Chengdu, the headquarters of the other five cabinet shops are in Chang'an, among which Wang Baoji Cabinet is the first.

Wang Baojijijifang was opened by Wang Yuanbao, a wealthy man in Chang'an. It is rumored that the Zhang Yun family is the backstage. It has branches in the fourteen major cities of the Tang Dynasty. It has extremely strong capital. Wang Baojijijijifang is headquartered in Dongcheng City, not too far from Anxijifang.

However, Wang Yuanbao's mansion, the main owner of Wang Baoji, was located in Pingkangfang, covering an area of ​​30 acres. The Tang Dynasty had many restrictions on merchants, such as not being allowed to ride horses, not being allowed to serve as officials, not being allowed to participate in the imperial examination, etc., but this is not absolute. In order to develop the economy, the ruling class would occasionally tolerate merchants. For example, during the Zhenguan period, when Yan Shigu was a secretary, he appointed wealthy businessmen as proofreader and proofreader. Although his status was not high, he was an important position in Qingliu. Generally, he was qualified to serve after he was appointed as a Jinshi. For example, when Wu Zetian was in power, Zhang Yizhi held a banquet in the inner palace and invited several people from Shu merchant Song Bazi and others to the palace to participate in Boyi and other games. Although he was criticized later, he entered the palace and shook his majesty in front of Wu Zetian. The merchants not only entered the political circle, but also entered the military circle. For example, Liu Congjian, the governor of Zhaoyi, appointed merchants as generals of the office.

Especially after the prosperity of Kaiyuan, the economy was prosperous, Li Longji was also relatively tolerant of merchants. For example, the giant Shang Wang Yuanbao was not qualified to live in a giant house with 30 acres of land. Li Longjit approved him to move in, and he also donated money to get a honorary official who was on the Light Car Commander.

On the evening of that day, Wei Jinsheng, the shopkeeper of Wang Baoji Cabinet in Dongcheng City, hurried to Wang Yuanbao's mansion. He brought a surprising news. His friend found that Anxi Cabinet was secretly carrying items. Every night, large boxes of items were shipped on board, which had lasted for several days. Although Anxi Cabinet was not large in size, it exclusively issued Anxi silver dollars. Therefore, it has been recognized as the second largest cabinet in the Tang Dynasty. When abnormal situations occurred, Wei and Jinsheng attached great importance to it.

Wang Yuanbao is about 60 years old, with dark skin and extremely fat. He is quite tall, and looks like a huge black bear from afar. Although he is not good at appearance, he is an extremely smart person. While enjoying life in luxury, he is also good at making a lot of money, so that he can always make a fortune and his family wealth will not fall.

Moreover, he was very willing to spend a lot of money to find the backstage. After his mother's seventy years of birthday, he gave a statue of Guanyin that was 100 meters tall and carved from top-quality jade. The lotus throne of Guanyin alone was made of hundreds of kilograms of gold and used five dou of top-quality jewelry to inlaid it. It was Zhang Yun's care that Wang Yuanbao was big, but it was not popular. Officials from all over the country were very respectful of his cabinets. Four years ago, Li Linfu was embarrassed to celebrate the birthday of the imperial concubine and the court could not afford the money. Li Linfu borrowed 300,000 jin from Wang Baoji's cabinet in the name of the court, and later returned it within the agreed time, which shows Wang Yuanbao's influence.

Wang Yuanbao was serving a concubine and slowly drank a bowl of bird's nest porridge. After listening to the report of the shopkeeper, if he had thought about it, he also got some inside information from the court. The court was seizing Gan and Su prefectures, which had blocked the way for Anxi silver dollar to advance eastward. It is said that this was to prepare for the court to issue 80,000 guan of silver coins, one guan for fifty, which is four million guan. Could it be that Anxi Guifang was carrying items for this?

"Do you know what they are moving?"

The shopkeeper Wei Jinsheng hurriedly said, "It should be a property of money. The guy saw that there was copper coins coming out of the wooden box."

"Then where did they go?"

"Report to the host, I sent someone to follow me and found that they had left the city along the Caohe River, and their whereabouts were unknown."

Wang Yuanbao thought for a while and said, "Don't worry about this. We can't afford to offend Anxi, just pretend that nothing happened."

"But I am worried that the court will issue silver and money. I have already received news from the Shaofu Supervisor that the new silver is originally silver and nine copper, but later it was insufficient copper, and it was changed to silver, one copper, six lead, and three, almost a layer of silver. Such money must be used as fifty, and the consequences are serious! Do we also need to take countermeasures?" Wei Jinsheng said worriedly.

Wang Yuanbao was also worried that the court issued silver and money, which was nothing more than giving it to officials as salary, or using it to JAC to buy grain, and then forcibly exchange copper coins with the cabinet shop to lend it out, or exchange the money customers had in the cabinet shop for 1 to 50 for silver and money. If it was the latter, his Wang Baoji Cabinet would be the first to be affected, but he had no good idea, unless it was closed, but that would cause a run and his cabinet shop would be finished.

At this time, a family member came to report: "Master, Master Xing San is here, I want to see Master."

Master Xing San is Xing Jun. The rich man in Chang'an who was rescued by Li Qing'an back then. He and Wang Yuanbao were sworn brothers. He opened the largest tea shop in Chang'an in the West City. Wang Gong was the backstage and was also a well-known figure in Chang'an.

"Please come in!"

The family hesitated for a moment and said, "But Master Xing San also brought a guest."

"What guest?" Wang Yuanbao asked strangely. Xing Jian never brought inexplicable people. Even if he wanted to bring them, he would inform him in advance. What happened today?

"The villain asked, but Master Xing San refused to say it. He only said it was very important. The guest also covered his face and couldn't see clearly."

"Important!" Wang Yuanbao's heart moved. The person coming must be not simple. He immediately ordered: "Take it to the guest room and I will arrive immediately."

He also said to Wei and Jinsheng: "You go back first and continue to pay attention to the situation in Anxiguifang, but don't get too close. If there is any change, report to me at any time."
Chapter completed!