Just when the seven Shatu tribes and the entire Ganzhou were in turmoil because of the "assassination" case of Governor Lei Sitong, Yan Liqiang, a person involved in the whole incident, quietly withdrew from it and returned to the Manufacturing Bureau.
Of course, before this, Yan Liqiang had established close relations with Wang Jianbei, the new governor of Pingxi County, and Liu Yucheng, the new military governor.
Wang Jianbei and Liu Yucheng were both die-hard subordinates of Lei Sitong, and they naturally knew that Yan Liqiang would cooperate with Lei Sitong to get involved in the salt industry. Not only did they know, but they were also one of the promoters of the plan. With Lei Sitong becoming Yan Liqiang's "Uncle Lei", the relationship between the two men and Yan Liqiang quickly heated up without Yan Liqiang even having to deliberately make friends with him, and the two sides suddenly became firm allies.
Being involved in the salt industry can be regarded as sharing the spoils, and the assassination of the Shatu people can be regarded as both parties carrying guns together to dig traps for the Shatu people. The relationship between the two parties already occupies two of the four irons in life, so it is hard to imagine that the relationship between the two parties is not good.
Before leaving Pingxi City, seeing that Wang Jianbei was troubled by the problem of too many Shatu people living in the Shatu gathering area in Pingxi City, Yan Liqiang "strike while the iron is hot" and proposed a plan to Wang Jianbei to gradually solve the problem of too many Shatu people in Pingxi City through non-violent means, which surprised Wang Jianbei very much.
The core principle of the solution proposed by Yan Liqiang to solve the problem of too many Shatu people in Pingxi City is to reduce the earning ability of the Shatu people in Pingxi City while significantly increasing the cost of living for the Shatu people in Pingxi City.
The Shatu people are doing all kinds of business in Pingxi City, such as medicinal materials, furs, wood, jewelry and even restaurants. All these things of the Shatu people are sold to various merchants in Pingxi City, and the basic living supplies of the Shatu people in Pingxi City, such as firewood, rice, oil and salt, are also purchased in Pingxi City. To solve the problem of too many Shatu people in Pingxi City, the county magistrate only needs to summon together the merchants, chambers of commerce and merchant groups that do business with the Shatu people, and let those merchants, chambers of commerce and merchant groups form a price alliance targeting the Shatu people.
In the future, when those people buy the supplies brought by the Shatu people, they can only buy them at half price or one-third of the price at most, the lower the price, the better. When the Shatu people want to buy daily necessities such as firewood, rice, oil and salt in the city, the price they sell to the Shatu people will continue to increase. With efforts on both sides at the same time, on the one hand, the money earned is getting less and less, and on the other hand, the cost of eating, drinking, defecating and urinating in Pingxi City is getting higher and higher. Many Shatu people who gather and live in Pingxi City can only be forced to leave Pingxi City. In this way, the number of Shatu people living in Pingxi City will be reduced, and the potential safety hazards in Pingxi City in the future will be eliminated.
Stimulated by huge profits, the merchants in Pingxi City are naturally willing to cooperate and cut the flesh of the Shatu people. All Wang Jianbei has to do is to establish a supervision and punishment mechanism. As long as any merchant in Pingxi City dares to privately break this tacit understanding and do business with the Shatu people, he will pay a heavy price.
This method neither uses violence nor uses violence as a backing. The government is not involved, but hides behind the scenes so that the court will not get hold of any evidence. At the same time, it can also benefit obedient merchants in the city, killing two birds with one stone. What surprised Wang Jianbei was that Yan Liqiang, at such a young age, could actually come up with such a method. He could solve the problem of the Shatu people, which had caused headaches for all the county governors, bit by bit without bloodshed. The method proposed by Yan Liqiang could actually be implemented not only in Pingxi City, but also in other counties in Ganzhou.
Of course, for Yan Liqiang, this method did not involve much technical content. He simply asked the merchants in Pingxi City to form a small cartel targeting the Shatu people.
Cartel is a form of monopoly, referring to a monopolistic alliance formed by companies that produce similar goods or provide similar services and reach an agreement on one or more aspects such as dividing the market, stipulating commodity output, and determining commodity prices in order to obtain high profits. Cartel was something that existed in the world where Yan Liqiang lived in his previous life, but in this world, some local guilds and chambers of commerce in various states and counties also have the embryonic form of cartel organizations.
Since the Shatu people dared to do such a heinous act as "assassinating the governor", let the Shatu people in Ganzhou first have a taste of the cartel and experience the pain of being exploited by capital and unscrupulous businessmen.
Cartels alone are not Yan Liqiang's style. When leaving Pingxi City, after a "long talk" between Yan Liqiang and Lei Sitong, Lei Sitong had decided to have someone start the Ganzhou Times after returning to Ganzhou City. It is foreseeable that in the future Ganzhou Times, the dark history of Shatu people from all over Ganzhou will be constantly exposed in every issue. Once the public opinion atmosphere created by Ganzhou Times is formed, it will be enough to make it difficult for Shatu people to move in Ganzhou and make the hated Huai'en Order a joke. When Huai'en Order was issued, there was no such thing as a newspaper. Even the Huai'en Order did not stipulate that negative news about Shatu people should not be reported. No matter how powerful Lin Qingtian is, he can't silence the people of the world...
Under normal circumstances, there would be no chance to use these methods against the Shatu people. However, this "assassination of the governor" by the Shatu people can become an opportunity for Ganzhou to legitimately counterattack the Shatu people. By making good use of this opportunity, the damage caused by the Shatu people to Ganzhou can be minimized when the Han Empire encounters great changes four years later.
Through this incident, everyone witnessed Yan Liqiang's ability and wisdom. Both Lei Sitong and Wang Jianbei and others looked at Yan Liqiang with admiration. They finally understood why Yan Liqiang was able to make a name for himself in Dijing City in such a short time.
… …
Yan Liqiang waved his sleeves and returned to the manufacturing bureau of Huanglong County without taking a cloud with him. After returning to the manufacturing bureau, Yan Liqiang was not idle either, but began to complete the final sorting and transformation of the manufacturing process of the four-wheeled carriage.
The manufacture of a four-wheeled carriage involves many processes and techniques. From the very beginning, Yan Liqiang was involved in every manufacturing link and process, and he was familiar with the manufacturing process. On this basis, Yan Liqiang decomposed and sorted out the entire manufacturing process of the four-wheeled carriage in the manufacturing bureau, and silently completed the transformation of the first manual assembly line for the production of four-wheeled carriages of this era.
Not only that, Yan Liqiang also forced the establishment of a new set of measurement standards that he proposed and refined within the Manufacturing Bureau...
Of course, for the craftsmen in the manufacturing bureau, at this moment, they cannot see the significance of the changes made by Yan Liqiang in the manufacturing bureau to them and the future of the Han Empire...
(End of this chapter)