"Mr. Dai, let's talk about repayment first. There are loans and repayments, and it's not difficult to borrow them again." Li Chao said with a smile, crossing his legs.

Dai Zhou was a little unhappy. If the court wants to pay back the money, why should we talk about borrowing money? He came to Li Chao as the Minister of Revenue to talk about borrowing money, but he had already put down his face, but Li Chao would not give him any face.

"Duke Zhao, Duke Xu, you both served as Minister of Revenue before me. Don't you know better how many families the court has? If the court really has money, why should I borrow it?"

Li Chao didn't care about this, "Dai Gong, this is not what we do, we have to follow the rules. If the court has no money, we have to come up with a charter without money. Let's discuss the repayment of the money first, and then talk about borrowing money."

Dai Zhou was so angry that he glared at him, "What kind of constitution does Duke Zhao want? Just say it."

"The money shop opens its doors to do business. Although it is said to lend, the money is actually the capital of the people in the money shop. The money shop itself has no money. We use the money from depositors to lend, and we can only take a small part of it to lend, and we have to consider that the people have to withdraw money at any time. If the people who borrow money are like the court and borrow money and don't repay it, the money shop will have a lot of bad debts, and it will be extremely troublesome at that time."

"But the court really has no money to pay it back."

"It doesn't matter if you don't have money to pay it back. We can find other ways to solve it."

When lending money houses, they are not casually released. Generally, they are mortgaged and can only borrow money with a mortgage. In this way, once they cannot be repaid due to maturity, the money house will collect mortgages. Only a very small number of parts rely on credit loans. Generally, these are large merchants or big families with excellent credit.

The imperial court borrowed a lot of money from Li Ji Money House before, and basically all loans were credit.

Li Chao's meaning is very clear. It is impossible for the court to repay it without credit and borrow it without mortgage. Not only can it not borrow it anymore, but what you borrowed before also has to use things to repay it with mortgage.

"I can provide Dai Gong with several solutions here, and Dai Gong should consider it?"

"What plan?" Dai Zhou, the Minister of Revenue, has no money for him now, and it is impossible to repay the money anyway.

"Considering that the court really has no money to pay back now, we can use other things. For example, the court can use mines, salt farms, and even ports to repay the loan." Li Chao threw out his own solution.

Dai Zhou's eyes lit up.

This is a solution.

The court had no money, but the court had the least shortage of mines and other things. If Li Chao proposed to the court to repay the land, Dai Zhou would not agree. Land is still very sensitive, but mines are not so sensitive.

"What mine does Duke Zhao want to take?"

Dai Zhou was owed all the money Li Ji Money House owed, which was 3.8 million yuan, and Dai Zhou wanted to repay it all with mines. Of course, he would not sell it at a low price. If possible, he would even be willing to exchange the more than 3 million bonds Li Ji's hand with mines.

Li Chao knew that Dai Zhou would agree.

Why did the court disagree with the real money and silver exchange for the imperial court's wilderness?

He was ready and took out a map.

“Salt, iron, coal mine.”

Li Chao first targeted these types of minerals, salt mining contract rights in salt lakes in Shuofang Dao Yanling and other prefectures, and even salt farm mining contract rights in Hebei, western Liaoning, Suiyuan, Huainan, Jiangdong, Lingnan and other coastal salt fields.

In addition, there are the coal and iron ore contracting and mining rights in Shuofang and Hedong.

Li Chao started to draw on the map directly. There were a total of ten salt fields, all of which had been explored long ago. Coal mines and iron mines were also well-explored long ago, with a total of more than a dozen mines.

"One hundred years of contract mining rights."

Dai Zhou looked at these circled places and was pondering.

He felt that he was a little over-prepared today, but Li Chao was obviously prepared for it.

I always feel that this transaction seems to be very cost-effective in the court, but in fact it is a loss.

“One hundred years is too long.”

"Dai Gong, I am very sincere. The salt farms and mines I have set up have not been developed yet. For the court, nothing counts, no loss at all, offsetting the loan of 3.8 million yuan. This does not include interest, and it adds up to more than four million yuan."

"We have to build roads and develop them by ourselves to take over these wastelands. The initial investment is a big number. We can't work hard to develop them. After just two years of work, the court took them back and enjoyed the profits, right?"

"A hundred years is still too long."

"Dai Gong, I haven't said I want permanent rights yet, but I just need a contract right for a hundred years. In fact, after careful calculation, this is a real win-win cooperation. The court has waived more than four million yuan in loans, and the court has also paid taxes to the court after these salt farm mines are developed. Think about it, how much new taxes will be added in a year?"

Dai Zhou admitted in his heart that Li Chao was right. But from another perspective, the Li family did not do a loss-making business. Who doesn’t know that the Li family in Bashang had already done a great job in salt, tea, sugar, wine, steel and other industries.

It is true that the imperial court had a strong control over salt, but it was implemented as a principle of civilian government buying and selling. Salt was produced by the people, then purchased by the government, and then sold to merchants for sale.

The court established a special salt company and issued salt tickets to allow the people to subscribe to raise funds and issue salt bonds. As far as Dai Zhou knew, Li Chao was holding a lot of stocks and salt bonds of the salt company.

At the same time, the court's salt company issued salt turfs, but because they were short of money, they had already issued many salt turfs. Now, the Li family holds the most of these salt turfs.

Therefore, the current Li family is actually the largest salt merchant in the Tang Dynasty.

Now the Li family is obviously no longer satisfied with selling salt to the court, and they are also preparing to produce salt directly. Although Dai Zhou felt that under the current salt monopoly system of the court, salt merchants had to sell salt to the court and then uniformly dispatched it. It was impossible to see that the Li family directly controlled the role of salt production, but he still felt that Li Chao's move was of great significance.

And iron and coal mines are even more important.

The Li family's iron and steel smelting technology possessed the most advanced smelting technology in the Tang Dynasty. It is amazing just by making hundreds of kilograms of molten steel in one furnace at a time. It is said that the most important thing in this steel smelting technology is open furnace and coke.

The open furnace is said to be very complex, with a huge furnace body, and it also needs a heat-retaining flame furnace, etc., but the key is to use coke made from coal as fuel, otherwise the temperature will not rise.

Li Ji's steel plant greatly increased the output of Datang steel, especially the output of steel. High-quality steel made the imperial court's military performance greatly improved, and the performance of armor, swords and guns were greatly improved. At the same time, the cost was also reduced, and the output was more critical.

As well as farm tools such as plows, rakes, hoes, shovels, and utensils, they are more exquisite and cheaper. The steel and tax revenue provided to the court every year by Li Ji Iron and Steel Factory is quite amazing, which is the workshop that the court focuses on. Even because of its extremely advanced technology, some officials in the court have proposed to acquire the steel workshop as an official.

If it weren't for the fact that this steel factory belonged to Li Chao, it might have been really owned by the officials.

During the Sui Dynasty, the court once stipulated that all mining rights were nationalized and that the operation was under the Yao service system. However, in the Tang Dynasty, private mining was allowed and the officials collected taxes, so the mining and smelting of the Tang Dynasty was actually very prosperous.

However, the technology was very backward at this time.

There are now 104 iron ores and 62 copper ores in the Tang Dynasty.

The imperial court's annual iron production was only 2 million kilograms, and the annual copper production was only more than 260,000 kilograms. As for steel, it was even more astonishingly low.

Although Li Ji's steel plant has just started, its output is already amazing, especially the steel output is very large, and one furnace can produce hundreds of kilograms of steel. Now Li Ji can make more than 100,000 kilograms of steel a year.

In the eyes of the court, this was very amazing, but in Li Chao's opinion, the steel production of only 1,000 tons per year is too low.

Originally, mining could be mined privately, but the court only collected taxes. However, under the previous reform proposed by Li Chao, mining can no longer be mined casually. It is necessary to obtain the court's permission first, issue a certificate to mine, and then have to have to have contract mining fees and also have to collect taxes.

Taxes for minerals are also quite special. They do not charge money, but pay in kind. Iron ore must be paid, and coal mines must be charged coal. The tax amount is basically about 20 to 20% to 25%.

The imperial court collected iron ore 25%.

The Tang Dynasty produced more than 2 million kilograms of iron a year, and it was basically mined by private people. Only those wealthy families controlled it, and the imperial court collected more than 500,000 kilograms of iron a year.

At the same time, since steel, iron, copper, silver, gold, sulfur, nitrate, alkali and other minerals must be paid 20% to 30% of the tax to the court, the rest cannot be sold at will. It must be sold to the court, which is the same as salt.

The government acquires it at a unified price and then sells it.

This approach is a very deceptive way to make money by losing the official position.

For example, in a workshop that produces iron pots and other products, they cannot buy iron materials directly from iron ore or other products, but from the government.

In fact, the Tang Dynasty only had a huge demand. The imperial court's weapons, the people's agricultural tools, tools, etc. all required a large amount of steel.

Because the output is too low, many people's farm tools in the past were just a little iron. Even when cooking pots, many people used pots, etc.

The price is also high.

The increase in steel production will certainly greatly improve the production level of the entire Tang Dynasty. Li Chao's steel industry is not just because of making money, but an important industry to enhance the basic national strength of the Tang Dynasty.

Previously, the imperial court only produced 2 million kilograms of iron a year. In the Northern Song Dynasty, it could produce 8 million kilograms of iron a year. By the Southern Song Dynasty, it could produce 20 million kilograms of iron a year. In the Ming Dynasty, it could produce 80 million kilograms of iron a year.

The significant increase in steel production can comprehensively enhance the national strength of the Tang Dynasty. Li Chao intends to allow the contracting rights mining fees of the imperial latte mine to offset the loan, which is a win-win situation.

"I have another requirement. The court's mining tax has been reduced from 2.5% to 10%. The mining tax of 2.5% is too high. Correspondingly, we are willing to increase the contract fee."

"The total of 30 salt fields, iron ore, coal mines, and one hundred years of contract rights and mining expenses I just set out to offset the 3.8 million loans and hundreds of thousands of interest borrowed by the court from Li Ji. What do you think?"

Dai Zhou quickly calculated in his heart that Li Chao was willing to offset the loan of about 4 million yuan for these thirty mineral salt farms alone. The court was obviously very cost-effective. You know, there was no contract mining fee before, and the court only collected taxes.
Chapter completed!