The person in charge of the Nantang funding management was the Portuguese, Deacon Fu Jixun, who had just been taken down because of opposing reform.

Therefore, Xiong Sanba did not know how much money the Macao Jesuits had transferred.

Eunuch Wei asked Xiong San to ask Fu Jixun. Soon after, Father Xiong came to say that Fu Jixun had received two Macau silver transactions.

The person who came with Father Xiong was Luo Qinan, a Belgian. He knew this more clearly. Father Xiong specifically asked him to come over to explain the situation to the Archbishop.

According to Luo Qinan, the two silvers transferred by the Macao Jesuits were one of the cash silver, totaling 15,000 taels. The shipment was first transported to Shantou, Guangdong, and then transported to Nandu on land, and then transported to Beijing by canal.

The other transaction is remittance, which is the popular money dealer acceptance. It was transferred from money dealers in Guangzhou, Yangzhou and the capital, about 35,000 taels.

The transportation and exchange of these two silvers were smooth, and there were no twists and turns. At the same time, whether it was sea transportation or land transportation, the people in charge were merchants engaged in maritime trade in Guangdong.

"His archbishop, the Jesuits in China have a way to contact the Guangdong government in China, and there are special Guangdong merchants in charge of the funds. In the past, the Jesuits allocated funds to mainland China were usually handed over to these Guangdong merchants..."

According to Luo Qinan, many of the "Guangdong businessmen" in Guangdong are engaged in maritime trade, and like the merchants in Jiangnan, they are suppliers of raw materials.

Therefore, Guangdong merchants provide help to the Jesus, and the Jesus in turn helps them export goods, so that both sides will help each other and benefit each other, which is a win-win relationship.

The largest cargo transit station in East and Southeast Asia is now Manila in Luzon, while the "economic" center is Macau, and the Ming Dynasty is the largest exporter of goods.

Politically, Macau is under the jurisdiction of Xiangshan County, Guangdong. Whether it is sovereignty, governance, or judicial power, they all belong to the Ming Dynasty, and "lease lending" are two concepts.

To accurately describe, Macau should be an open window established by the Ming Dynasty at the southernmost end of the empire. The establishment of this window was not simply a matter of Portugal's pursuit of residence, but was caused by the influence of the maritime trade brought by the Longqing switch.

The most direct impact of Macau's opening is that about 14 million taels of silver are imported to Macau through the Philippines, and then imported from Macau to the Ming Dynasty.

During the same period, the Ming Dynasty's fiscal revenue was less than 5 million taels a year.

The half-century import of silver made the Ming Dynasty a veritable "silver empire". Conservatively estimated that there were hundreds of millions of taels of silver flowing into China through Macau.

In this process, the Macau "Special Zone" belonging to Xiangshan County, Guangdong Province also assumed the important task of East-West cultural exchange.

Under the influence of "Western learning spreads to the east", this was the Jesuits in China and Xu Guangqi, a large number of officials committed to reform and opening up, and a large number of Western firearms and technical talents came to the east; the story of Western mercenaries fighting the Tartars for the Ming Dynasty; the story of the Ming emperor being baptized and joined the Catholic Church; the story of the Ming Dynasty seeking help from the Vatican...

Even the demise of the Ming Dynasty had an important relationship with Macau.

Because of Macau's external window, hundreds of millions of taels of silver flowed into the Ming Dynasty. However, this silver did not enter the treasury of the Ming Dynasty, or most of it did not enter the treasury, but entered the pockets of merchants and gentry.

In economics, the influx of a large amount of silver will definitely cause the price surge in the Ming Dynasty. In fact, until the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the prices in the Ming Dynasty were relatively stable. Not only did they not depreciate, but they became more expensive.

The reason is that although there is a lot of silver, it is in the hands of a few wealthy businessmen. Due to the single trade structure, the production of silk, tea, and porcelain does not require a large amount of funds to expand and re-production, merchants like to hoard the silver in their hands, forming a huge "silver reserve".

If silver does not enter the consumer field, it will naturally not cause inflation.

In order to earn more silver, merchants and gentlemen planted large quantities of cash crops, which directly led to the reduction of grain production in the Ming Dynasty. The number of cultivated land in the famous Jiangnan and Huguang grain production areas continued to decline. While the grain declined, the domestic demand for cash crops was seriously insufficient, and the long-term price sluggishness led to deflation.

In the late Ming Dynasty, the Philippines and Japan's two important silver export sites suddenly decreased significantly due to their respective reasons, which caused a "money shortage" in the Ming Dynasty, the "Silver Empire". In the country, natural disasters continued to occur, and the court could not provide food for disaster relief, so the famine became more and more intense, and in the end, even military spending and daily expenditures encountered difficulties.

Faced with severe deflation, Chongzhen gave two strong doses of drugs - increasing revenue and reducing expenditure. However, it was these two tricks that completely pushed the crumbling Ming Dynasty to destruction.

Eunuch Wei knew this history well, so he vigorously started maritime affairs in order to get back the huge profits of maritime trade from the public. Not to mention all of them, it would be fine to get back half or even half.

Silver is a good thing, but it only needs to be circulated. Only when money moves can money make money and buy goods. Holding money at home, it makes people satisfied. Yu’s family is beneficial, but Yu’s country has no profit at all.

The Macao Jesuits were able to send 50,000 taels, but Eunuch Wei was quite satisfied. He asked Xiong Sanba to talk about Macau with Luo Qinan, and something attracted the attention of his elders.

This is speculation.

In Macau, a large number of Western businessmen are engaged in a new type of transaction - "return to foreign exchange."

Since the Longqing switch, a large amount of goods were exported to the West in the Ming Dynasty, and a large amount of silver was exchanged for low prices, so the Ming Dynasty became the largest inflow of silver in the world.

Faced with the crazy influx of silver, the managers of the empire did not keep up with the times, and they were very backward in managing currency.

Luo Qinan said that the gold-silver price ratio in countries around the world is above 1:10, that is, one tael of gold is exchanged for at least ten taels of silver.

In the Ming Dynasty, because the official currency did not recognize gold and silver, the exchange of gold and silver was mainly spontaneously formed by the people. The exchange ratio was between 1:5.5-7, and about five to seven taels of silver could be exchanged for one tael of gold.

The difference in exchange between the two is very obvious and there is room for speculation. Therefore, a large number of foreign merchants shipped silver to the Ming Dynasty to exchange gold, and used this method to make excess profits effortlessly.

The profit of this "return to foreign exchange arranging" is amazing. If all the silver flowing into China in Macau every year is transferred, it is equivalent to speculation that merchants have taken about five million silver out of thin air from China every year.

Of course, in fact, it is impossible to have such a large-scale foreign exchange arranging space. Eunuch Wei privately estimated that businessmen engaged in foreign exchange arranging business could take at most one or two million taels a year.

It’s not that these Western businessmen don’t want to take away more, but that the private exchange business in the Ming Dynasty is still relatively scattered and has not formed a whole, so the single company’s exchange ability is not strong.

Moreover, the redemption business in this era is not as developed as in later generations. You can do it at any counter, but you have to travel around different places, which limits the possibility of large-scale redemption and cash out.

For example, the 35,000 taels of silver that the Macau Church remitted to Nantang was not directly transferred to the capital at one time, but was first exchanged through the Guangzhou Commercial Bank, then transferred from Yangzhou, and finally accepted in the capital. A total of three banks participated in this business.

"Does the church engage in remittance?" My father-in-law was very interested in this.

Luo Qinan has just been in the East for more than a year, so he is not very clear about this.

Xiong Sanba came earlier, so he heard that there were indeed people in the Jesuits in China engaged in this business, but he didn't know how to operate it.

"If your Archbishop wants to know about this, you can send someone to Macau to learn about it." Xiong Sanba said.

Eunuch Wei did not comment and asked Xiong Sanba to prepare the 50,000 taels he had transferred. He sent someone to take it away in two days. Xiong Sanba had no objection to this, because Guo Jujing had told him before that His Archbishop needed money to touch the heart of the Ming Emperor in order to convince the Ming Emperor to send an imperial army to conquer the reactionary Japanese shogunate who was persecuting the Catholics.

"Don't call me the Archbishop in the future, call me the leader."
Chapter completed!