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Tian Lingzi handed over the Liaohai salt and iron transport envoy and the minting coin to Li Jing, but offered the condition to hand over three million jin of coins a year, which was predicted that Li Jing would not be able to complete this impossible task. The salt sea is salt, and the labor investment is large, but the harvest is not much. Even if a bucket of 100 cents is added, one million and a half stones of salt must be sold in a year. One million and a half million stones! Even if all the salt factories in Lianghuai were added together, they might be able to cook so much salt. How could Li Jing make such a small piece of land in Dengzhou be so small?

If Li Jing dares to increase the price of this high-priced salt, then the public resentment will be boiling, and you can just apply to Li Jing's book directly to cure him. If he can't sell three million yuan and pay it back then, you can also ask him about his crime. At least, the emperor will definitely not spoil Li Jing as he sees.

Tian Lingzi's abacus was very good, but he didn't expect that Li Jing's salt was not cooked but was directly dried. The annual output of more than 10,000 acres of salt fields could be enough for this huge amount of money even if it was sold at half price from official salt.

Moreover, Li Jing now controls the right to sell tea and the right to manage minerals and mint coins.

Li Jing invited hundreds of mining craftsmen of various minerals, formed a dozen exploration teams, and dispatched a group of troops and many officials to explore the minerals in Dengzhou and Liaodong.

After half a month of exploration, dozens of minerals were discovered in Dengzhou. The most of them were gold mines, natural sulfur, gypsum, sandstone for glass, and lead. In addition, there are many minerals such as petroleum, diamond, graphite, talc, coal, iron ore, bauxite, potassium salt, limestone, alkaline limestone, mineral salt, lithium salt, etc.

There are also many minerals on the Liaodong Peninsula, including five main minerals: coal, iron, copper, tin and petroleum.

The minerals that the Tang Dynasty prohibited private mining were mainly copper, iron, tin, and lead, and the other minerals such as gold, silver, salt and coal were all mined privately. However, the mining technology in the Tang Dynasty was not high, and many of the minerals in Dengzhou had not been mined yet, and some of them were only mined a little.

Li Jing carefully looked at the reports submitted by the craftsmen. The most minerals in Dengzhou were lead, limestone, gold, steel and stone, while the most in Liaodong were coal, iron, copper, tin, and oil.

However, in Li Jing's memory, the most precious mineral on the Shandong Peninsula is gold. The gold reserves on the peninsula seem to be the highest in China, and the Zhaoyuan Gold Mine is also called China's Golden Capital. However, after looking carefully at the map, Li Jing was somewhat disappointed to discover that the Zhaoyuan Gold Mine and Sanshan Island Gold Mine, the largest gold mine on the Shandong Peninsula, were not in Dengzhou, but in Laizhou. The Zhaoyuan Gold Mine is close to the border between Dengzhou and Laizhou.

Zhaoyuan Gold Mine is known as China's largest gold mine, with a reserve of hundreds of tons, which was a thousand years later, and it had not been mined in large quantities at this time.

One ton of two thousand kilograms, one kilogram of sixteen kilograms, and one kilogram of gold is worth eight jin. One kilogram of gold is worth 128 jin. One ton is as high as 256,000 jin. Those hundreds of tons mean reserves of tens of millions of jin.

Li Jing specifically asked the craftsman that he knew that someone had mined the Zhaoyuan Gold Mine since the Sui Dynasty, but even at this time, it was still sporadic mining, and it was almost all private mining, and the government just collected taxes.

A huge piece of fat meat was right next to his mouth, but he couldn't eat it. Li Jing was a little depressed. But if he couldn't control Zhaoyuan, Li Jing was unwilling to mine it now. Dig up gold mountains on other people's territory. This is a very stupid move.

If gold mines cannot be mined for the time being, then we can only mine the minerals on our territory first.

After carefully studying the mineral exploration reports in various places, Li Jing convened the civil and military affairs of Zhendong Army.

Li Jing pointed to several places that had been marked on the map and said, "These places are lead, tin, and copper mines. I am going to send people to mine in large quantities. Then mint the money!"

Li Jing is now a coin minting agent. He can publicly mint money, and because Tian Lingzi wants to cheat him, he directly contracted these official positions to Li Jing. In addition to paying three million guan a year, whether Li Jing sells salt, mining, minting, and collects tea tax, whether it is his loss or making money. With such an opportunity, how could Li Jing miss it? Now Li Jing plans to mine and mint a large scale.

Zhang Hong said hesitantly: "It is better to cast a copper ware for sale than to lose money in minting?"

There has always been a shortage of money in the Tang Dynasty, and the abundance of private minting of money and silk.

The money shortage is because the amount of coins in the Tang Dynasty was very small. The 99 coin mints in the world were minted more than 3,000 jin per furnace, and the world was minted more than 300,000 jin a year. In a great empire like the Tang Dynasty, the official mints only more than 300,000 jin a year, and the coins they cast were not enough to circulate. There are many reasons for the small amount of coins in the official mints. The main reason is that early copper ores and other minerals could be mined privately, so most of the copper ores were held in private hands, and the price of copper remained high. Each furnace required more than 100 craftsmen, and the labor cost was extremely high. The third reason was that copper ware was extremely expensive. Many people melted copper coins into copper ware in private, making two or three times the profit. On the one hand, there were fewer coins, but a large number of copper ware were melted off, so the more they used the less money.

The shortage of money has led to the proliferation of private casting.

Private money is different from official money. It is basically insufficient weight or quality, so it is used to make profits. The popularity of private minting has led to bad money driving out good money, causing the value of money to continue to decline, while prices continue to rise, and the market economic order is constantly destroyed.

In dealing with private casting, the court has always had only three tricks: one is to collect and prohibit, that is, the court uses silk and rice to collect bad coins to destroy them, and the other is to establish a strict law to prohibit private casting. Once discovered, they are severely punished. The second trick is to issue large coins. The so-called large coins are to use one for ten, one for twenty, and even directly issue iron coins to combat private casting. However, this is a method of losing both sides. The final result is that prices continue to soar and the credit of coins is reduced to the lowest. This method is used several times, but in the end they fail. The last trick is to prohibit copper ban. The mining rights of copper mines are collected as officials, and private mining is prohibited. On the other hand, it is also prohibited to cast large copper ware. No one can use copper as a vessel to prohibit copper as a vessel, and those who prohibit people from casting copper as a utensil, Buddha statues, and those who have accumulated more than a few kilograms of copper to think that other things are unforgivable. It is even stipulated that transactions of more than ten jin must be used.

But now, the imperial court is still in a bad state of money. Many times, silk cloth is used instead, or even bartering and commodity trading, and more, flying money is used instead of circulation.

Li Jing planned to mine and mint coins. In Zhang Hong's opinion, that is a loss-making transaction. The amount of mints is lost. It is better to directly purchase copper-cast copperware and sell it, which is a few times the profit.

As early as Shamen Town had a shortage of money, Li Jing had to set up a banknote to issue banknotes and circulate it internally on a small scale. This method has achieved remarkable results and has changed the dilemma of banknotes to a large extent. However, now that the territory is getting bigger and the population is more under the rule. Li Jing also plans to continue to expand the banknotes and issue banknotes to the entire Qingnicheng and Beishacheng control areas in Dengzhou and Liaodong.

However, to issue banknotes, you must have enough copper coins reserves. Otherwise, once the banknotes cannot be exchanged for copper coins, the banknotes' credit will be over. Therefore, if Li Jing wants to expand the issuance of banknotes and banknotes, he must increase the copper coins reserves.

However, Li Jing also considered the issue of losing money by minting for a long time.

The cost of minting is mainly two, one is material and the other is artificial.

There are three materials for copper coins, namely copper, lead and tin. The earliest Kaiyuan Tongbao, the proportion of the three materials was 78.14%, lead 12.29%, and tin 7.21%. The most important cost was copper. In the past two hundred years of the Tang Dynasty, the proportion of materials of copper coins continued to change, the proportion of copper continued to decline, and the proportion of lead and tin continued to rise. Nowadays, most of the official coins cast by the imperial court were still Kaiyuan Tongbao, but copper was only 60.13%, lead reached 26.45%, and tin also reached 12.32%.

The coin casting process at this time was to cast tin mother coins first, and wet casting from sand. Compared with the sand casting in later generations, it was just the primary process. At this time, the official coins used 21,210 kilograms of copper, 3,790 kilograms of white tin, and 540 kilograms of black tin. The cost of copper tin and lead for each silo is 750 kilograms, and the craftsman's money is not included. A furnace of 3,300 kilograms of coins, and on average, a craftsman can cast 367 coins per day.

In this way, the copper and lead material coins for minting are always 750 yuan, and the labor costs for minting are almost 200 yuan. If you count charcoal and other minting, the cost of minting is actually reaching this amount.

However, the private money is always about half of the material, and the copper material is used less, so there is also a huge profit. Moreover, the private money file and grinding are not fine, and the labor cost is much less. Therefore, compared with official money, private money has a lot of profit.

"Don't worry, since I plan to mint money, I will never lose money." Li Jing said with a smile.

"Are you going to mint white money?" Zhang Hong asked in surprise.
Chapter completed!