Chapter 425: Changes

Just when the Shatu Seven Tribes and all of Gan Province were in chaos due Lei Sitong’s ‘assassination’ case, Yan Liqiang who was involved in both cases withdrew himself and returned to the manufacturing bureau.

Prior to this, Yan Liqiang had established a close relationship with the newly-appointed Pingxi Prefectural Governor Wang Jianbei and the Military Governor Liu Yucheng when he was still in Pingxi City.

Wang Jianbei and Liu Yucheng were both Lei Sitong’s reliable subordinates. They knew about Lei Sitong and Yan Liqiang’s plan on stepping into the salt business and they supported it. Given the situation that Yan Liqiang addressed Lei Sitong as ‘Uncle Lei’, both parties instantly became allies without any additional effort.

They had set foot into the salt business, and also worked together to get rid of the Shatu people during the ‘assassination’ case. It was sufficient to say that both parties had been through thick and thin. Hence, it was inevitable that they would become fast friends.

Before Yan Liqiang left Pingxi City, he saw that Wang Jianbei felt troubled about the overcrowding issue among the Shatu community in the city. Yan Liqiang acted on the opportunity promptly by proposing a non-violent solution to progressively resolve the overpopulation problem and Wang Jeibei was extremely shocked by his proposal.

The core principle behind Yan Liqiang’s proposed solution was to reduce the Shatu people’s money-making capability and substantially increase the cost of living for them.

The Shatu people in Pingxi City ran all sorts of businesses that involved medicinal ingredients, fur, leather, wood, jewelry, and even restaurants. They sold their products to all the merchants in Pingxi City and they bought all their daily necessities from the city. To resolve the problem, all they needed to do was get the Provincial Governor to gather all the merchants, trading companies, chambers of commerce, and merchant groups who dealt with the Shatu people to form a union to counteract the prices that the Shatu people had set.

From there onward, the products that the Shatu people sold should only be purchased at half the price or just one-third of the selling price at maximum — the lower the better. And when the Shatu people wanted to buy their daily necessities, they should be sold at higher prices. With both sides working in unison, the Shatu people’s earnings would be reduced while their spending would be increased. Most of the Shatu people in the city would then be forced to leave. With that, the population of Shatu people in Pingxi City would decline and the security risks within the city could be put to an end.

The merchants in Pingxi City were naturally willing to cooperate for the opportunity of reaping big profits from the Shatu people. Wang Jianbei’s role was to establish a monitoring and penalty control department. If any merchants in the city were found breaking the rules, they would need to pay a severe penalty.

This solution would not involve any violence or require any intervention from the bureaucracy. All the bureaucracy had to do was support this behind the scenes. This way, the imperial court would not be able to track their involvement and at the same time, the merchants in the city could reap some benefits. Wang Jianbei was shocked to see a young man like Yan Liqiang come up with such a progressive solution to solve all the provincial governors’ headaches without any bloodshed. Apart from Pingxi City, the solution that Yan Liqiang had proposed could also be executed across the other prefectures in Gan Province.

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To Yan Liqiang, the solution did not require any particular skills or techniques. He just needed all the Pingxi City merchants to form a small cartel against the Shatu people.

A cartel was a form of monopolization, commonly practiced in industries that manufactured the same products or provided similar services. They divided the market by setting a production limit, agreeing on the same selling prices, or they would make agreements on a few factors, thus partnering together to achieve market dominance and higher profits. This was something that existed in Yan Liqiang’s previous world. However, the chambers of commerce of every prefecture in this world also functioned like cartels.

Since the Shatu people were bold enough to ‘assassinate the Provincial Governor’, then it was only natural to let the Shatu people in Gan Province to have a taste of cartels. They’d experience the pain of being stripped of revenue while dealing with evil merchants.

It was not Yan Liqiang’s style to stop with just the cartel. He had a ‘long conversation’ with Lei Sitong, and by the time he left Pingxi City, Lei Sitong had already decided that when he returned to Gan Provincial City, he would get people to start the ‘Gan Province Times’ newspaper. On every issue, an article on the dark history of the Shatu people in Gan Province would be published. Once the social pressure created by the future ‘Gan Province Times’ took its course, the Shatu people in Gan Province would be in a difficult position, and the detested ‘Writ of Grace’ would be reduced into nothing but a joke. When the ‘Writ of Grace’ first came out, the newspaper hadn’t been invented yet. Hence, the ‘Writ of Grace’ did not state any rules that prohibited the report of negative news regarding the Shatu people. Regardless of how powerful Lin Qingtian was, there was no way he could clamp the mouths of the masses…

Usually, it wouldn’t be possible to implement any methods that would put the Shatu people at a disadvantage. However, the recent ‘assassination attempt’ had given Gan Province a justifiable cause to retaliate against the Shatu people. This opportunity would reduce the damage done by the Shatu people to a bare minimum when the Great Han Empire would undergo massive changes in four years time.

From this instance, Lei Sitong, Wang Jianbei, and the others were able to personally witness Yan Liqiang’s capability and intelligence. They finally understood how Yan Liqiang had made a name for himself in the Imperial Capital within such a short period of time.

…

Yan Liqiang returned to the manufacturing bureau in Huanglong County and continued to work on the final processes and details of manufacturing the four-wheeled carriage.

The manufacturing of the four-wheeled carriage involved many processes and technology. From the beginning, Yan Liqiang was involved in every step of the process, so he had a very solid understanding of the entire thing. Based on this foundation, he was able to breakdown the process of manufacturing a four-wheeled carriage into stages. With that, he had silently set up the first generation of the four-wheel carriage manual assembly line.

Aside from that, Yan Liqiang had also established a set of refined weight and measurement standards in the manufacturing bureau…

Of course, at that moment, the craftsmen working in the manufacturing bureau could not see how the changes that Yan Liqiang made could impact the future of the Great Han Empire…