Chapter eight hundred and fifty-seven local enterprises
The Spring Festival in the sixth year of Xuanping was a Spring Festival full of joy and laughter for the Tang Dynasty. The monarchs and ministers of the Tang Dynasty were extremely happy.
The industrial and commercial class, who had made a lot of money in the past few years by relying on the Tang Dynasty's support for industrial and commercial policies, also had a great year. Although at the beginning they were full of opposition and even contempt for the Tang Dynasty, because of these
The industrial and commercial class in the Tang Dynasty was strictly speaking a gentry class that owned a large amount of land.
They were very dissatisfied with the tax policy of the Tang Dynasty.
But now, they are the most supportive of the industrial and commercial policies of the Tang Dynasty, and even firmly support the Tang Dynasty to continue the Northern Expedition and completely unify China, because this will allow them to earn more money.
Money, who doesn’t like it?
Not to mention ordinary people, the Tang Dynasty's current main civil affairs policies can basically be summarized as supporting industry and commerce and reducing the burden on farmers.
The former was aimed at the industrial and commercial industries, while the latter was aimed at farmers. In fact, many of the policies issued by the Tang Dynasty were specifically targeted at farmers.
From the initial unified agricultural tax, to joining the army to allocate land, renting official land instead of purchasing it, and tax exemption for land reclamation, these are all policies specifically introduced to relieve farmers.
Countless farmers under the rule of the Tang Dynasty have benefited from many agricultural policies of the Tang Dynasty. Although many people may still have difficulty eating enough, their lives are much better than before. They will no longer be the same as before.
A small disaster can cause a farmer's family to go completely bankrupt and sell their sons and daughters.
At the same time, the Tang Dynasty also actively rescued some natural disasters that have been suffered by various places recently. In the early years, the typhoon floods in western Guangdong, the drought in southern Jiangxi, and many other scattered natural disasters, the Tang Dynasty always used "
With the work-for-relief policy as the core, a wide range of disaster relief activities have been implemented.
At the same time, local governments were also asked to organize the construction of water conservancy facilities, dredge rivers, and repair official roads. For these local infrastructure constructions, the central government only provided very symbolic subsidies, and most of the funds needed to be solved locally.
If the local finance is rich, then most of it will be funded by the local finance, supplemented by donations from local gentry, and then local farmers will be hired to build it during their slack time.
If the local finance has no money, then the only way is to mobilize the gentry to contribute money and farmers to contribute their own efforts to carry out small and limited construction projects, including roads, bridges, and water conservancy projects.
This not only improved the infrastructure construction in various places, but also did not cost much money. In addition, these infrastructure construction activities also increased the organizational strength of the militia organizations of the Tang Dynasty.
Because whether it is through mutual benefit, or the government pays for people to build official roads, it is basically the local militia organization that takes the lead and pulls local young people to build it.
Regarding infrastructure construction in various places, Li Xuan issued instructions: All regions should adapt to local conditions, overcome difficulties, and carry out infrastructure construction of water conservancy, roads, and bridges that are related to people's livelihood as much as possible.
The translation of this saying is: localities have to find ways to solve it themselves, and it won’t be enough if they don’t solve it!
As for what the central finance is doing, the central finance used to be unable to make ends meet, but last year the central finance eased a little, but most of the central finance was used on some key projects, such as the factories of the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Taxation.
Office expenses, and then the construction of business zones for five trading ports.
As for ordinary localities, the current central finance is still unable to provide too much support. It can only provide some symbolic subsidies and let the localities solve their own problems as much as possible.
To solve this problem on our own, we do not have to let local governments collect taxes. The power to collect taxes only belongs to the central tax department. If local governments intervene, they will destroy the family and exterminate the family.
However, the local government is not helpless. If taxes are not enough, then they will charge fees!
However, you can't actually charge much for things like fees, because the tax department is keeping an eye on you. If you dare to make a mess, the tax department will destroy the local government office in a matter of minutes.
In the end, there was no other way, and the local government just started to prepare to borrow money!
Recently, Songjiang Prefecture set a precedent for the Tang Dynasty. In order to expand the wharf of the commercial port, Songjiang Prefecture Yamen directly packaged the Shanghai Wharf and nearby warehouses and land through some operations, and established the Shanghai Wharf that belongs directly to Songjiang Prefecture.
The company then used the subsequent profits of the Shanghai Port Terminal Company as the repayment plan, and used part of the land and terminals of the Shanghai Terminal Company as collateral to apply for a loan from the Royal Bank!
As a policy bank, the presidents of the local Royal Bank of Shanghai branch are very politically sensitive. They felt that Songjiang Prefecture’s operation method contained political risks, so they rejected it!
But Songjiang Prefecture did not give up and turned to the private Guangfeng Bank. This Guangfeng Bank is actually a private company jointly funded by many powerful merchants such as maritime merchants in Guangzhou.
Although the bank is not weak in terms of strength, it is naturally incomparable to the Royal Bank.
However, this group of businessmen, who were obsessed with money, sent people to carefully inspect the assets of Shanghai Terminal Company. They thought it was an extremely high-quality asset, and then they actually agreed to the loan!
However, even if they agreed to the loan, the officials in Songjiang Prefecture still didn't know whether their operation method was feasible. If they were accused of selling national assets to businessmen at a low price, then the local officials would be finished, so
They cautiously wrote a memorial asking Li Xuan to approve their plan, but signed the contract directly without privately.
When Li Xuan learned about this, he felt very speechless. The way these local officials make money is really self-taught, regardless of China or foreign countries, ancient or modern. This operation looks like the methods of later generations.
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However, Li Xuan did not refuse directly, but asked the cabinet to strictly review it, and also asked the cabinet to come up with a management method for local governments to prepare state-owned enterprises.
We can't just say that if any local government wants to set up a company, we can just set up a company, nor can we say that the company can do whatever it wants. What if there is a bold guy who sells the entire state capital?
After the Spring Festival in the sixth year of Xuanping's reign, the first cabinet meeting was to discuss the management methods of this state-owned enterprise!
The Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Taxation, the Ministry of Commerce and even the Ministry of Personnel were all involved. Finally, at the meeting, they finalized a brand-new management plan for state-owned enterprises.
First of all, a brand-new agency, the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, was established in the cabinet. This agency will uniformly manage all state-owned enterprises and other state-owned assets, whether they are the original enterprises of the Ministry of Industry, or the Royal Publishing House of the Ministry of Rites, etc.
The main few persons in charge of the above-mentioned enterprises should be officials who are recommended by the Ministry of State-owned Assets and appointed and removed by the Ministry of Officials. However, ordinary managers and employees are recruited from the society following the example of the previous enterprises under the Ministry of Industry. Their business methods are:
Follow the principles of market economy.
All enterprises pay taxes as normal as private enterprises. Some profitable enterprises retain part of the funds needed for expansion and operation, and the remaining part is directly turned over to the national treasury.
In order to ensure the revenue of the national treasury, the Ministry of Taxation will directly dispatch tax officials to various state-owned enterprises to supervise the accounts.
This brand-new organization almost directly split the Ministry of Works, and in this way, the original Ministry of Works was almost in name only.
In order to compensate and adjust at the same time, the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises will be established based on the original main institutions of the Ministry of Industry. Most officials from the Ministry of Industry, such as the Minister of Industry and the Right Minister, will be directly transferred to the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises.
After the Ministry of Industry was stripped of its direct-affiliated enterprises, only the original construction of infrastructure in various places was left. Its power has plummeted, but it can be regarded as the legitimate Ministry of Industry.
At the same time, for the local establishment of state-owned enterprises, provincial-run enterprises and prefecture-run enterprises are allowed. Their ownership should belong to the local state-owned assets department. Other management methods are similar to those of state-owned enterprises directly under the central government. They operate and pay normally like private enterprises.
Profits are paid directly to the local finance.
However, when setting up these two types of state-owned enterprises, you need to obtain approval from the Ministry of State-owned Assets. In principle, only those enterprises that private enterprises are unwilling to get involved in, or are unable to get involved in, that are related to the lifeline of the country are allowed to be established. The ordinary category will be ordinary private enterprises.
Although there is no clear prohibition on the types of enterprises that form competition, they generally will not pass the review.
After waiting for a long time, the officials of Songjiang Prefecture found that the Shanghai Terminal Company, which they had been preparing for a long time, finally received permission and became the first government-owned state-owned enterprise in the Tang Dynasty. Then it officially signed an agreement with Guangfeng Bank.
The loan contract involved borrowing 100,000 taels of silver to expand port-related facilities.
On the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, through the Datang Dynasty Daily, the Tang Dynasty officially announced to the world the establishment of the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises and issued a management award for new state-owned enterprises.
And what does this also mean? It means that localities in various places can also run state-owned enterprises. Although running a state-owned enterprise may not necessarily make money, and sometimes it may lose money, a large state-owned enterprise in the local area is profitable for officials.
In fact, it doesn't matter. What they value more is the tax revenue and the large number of jobs that such large state-owned enterprises can bring and the related industries that can be promoted.
For a time, people all over the country were preparing to set up state-owned enterprises. Why can Songjiang Prefecture do it, but we can’t!
We are poorer here, and we need this kind of large-scale enterprises to drive local economic development!
In less than a month, the newly established Ministry of State-owned Enterprises received hundreds of applications for the establishment of local state-owned enterprises!
However, although there are many applications, because this policy has just been implemented, the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises is also very cautious. It only selected ten typical companies for approval. As for the others, it will be postponed for now and let’s look at the first batch of pilot projects.