When these maritime merchants appeared in the capital, Zhu Youzhen was happy to see them happen at first, because at the beginning, they were only targeting Zheng Zhilong and other maritime leaders who controlled the shipping routes to various parts of Southeast Asia.

At the request of Shen Tingyang, who hurried to the capital, Zhu Youzhen agreed to accept these maritime merchants into the association, hoping that they could become another force in the association to support him.

But he soon realizes that things don't seem to be going his way. Although these maritime merchants are mainly composed of Chongming Shen, Wenzhou Wang, Wenling Huang, Chaozhou Ge, Xu and other maritime merchants.

However, among these maritime merchants, the Chongming Shen clan is not a one-man existence. After all, the Shen family was only quite influential in Chongming and Shanghai in the past, and no one knew about it when they left Songjiang Mansion.

This time, the Shen family was elected as the representative of these small and medium-sized maritime merchants in the south, mainly because of the face of Shen Tingyang presiding over the Longjiang Shipyard. After the opening of the sea ban, the purchase of ships became the first step in wanting to participate in overseas trade. Without ships, no matter how profitable overseas trade is, it has nothing to do with you.

After the Longjiang Shipyard restored the two large docks, it immediately became the only shipyard in the south of the Yangtze River that could build large ships, and the original private shipyards in Zhejiang and Fujian and Guangzhou were immediately surpassed by the Longjiang Shipyard.

These maritime merchants know that the larger the ship, the safer it is at sea, and the cost of transportation can be significantly reduced. If you want to dig out a dock the same size as the Longjiang Shipyard, the resources invested and the time required are very amazing, after all, these docks were built by the Yongle Emperor with state-level investment, and it is not something that the private can just dig and overtake.

However, although they were still counting on being able to get the big ship they needed from Shen Tingyang as soon as possible, it didn't mean that they recognized the Shen family's leadership position among them.

Now that they had met the emperor himself, the representatives of these maritime merchants naturally began to complain to Chongzhen, asking the emperor to abolish several unreasonable policies.

Shen Tingyang and his uncle could only listen awkwardly as these companions presented their opinions to Chongzhen at the venue. When Shen Tingyang asked Chongzhen, he probably didn't think about getting anything from these maritime merchants, he simply wanted to expand the group of merchants involved in the maritime trade as soon as possible, so as to fix the policy of shipping grain from the north to the south.

All along, officials of the DPRK and China have opposed the change of water transportation to sea transportation, because they believe that sea transportation is unsafe, and that the grain loaded by sea ships far exceeds that of river ships, and that in the event of a shipwreck, the losses will be too great.

Although Shen Tingyang refuted this statement, he could not guarantee that there would be no accidents in the sea transportation. It is also an indisputable fact that as long as an accident occurs, the grain lost by a sea ship will be at least worth the volume of two or three river boats.

However, if the number of ships transporting grain from north to south reaches a certain level, the argument put forward by these officials that the risk of transporting grain by sea will be self-defeating.

Moreover, as soon as there are more ships traveling between the north and the south, he can suggest that the grain should be transported in a decentralized manner and that the method of transporting grain several ships a month should be adopted to reduce the risk of transporting grain at sea in a centralized manner.

This is why he spoke for these merchants and asked Chongzhen to allow them to participate in the Maritime Association. However, he didn't think that these merchant representatives had already begun to make conditions to the emperor before their butts were hot, which made him embarrassed and annoyed.

When Zhu Youzhen agreed to allow these maritime merchants to enter the association, he did not expect that these businessmen would aim at the various policies he had formulated so quickly.

The representatives of these businessmen said a lot, but Zhu Youzhen only heard a few major requests. Reduced ship taxes; Reduction of vessel security deposits; reduce insurance rates for vessels, people and cargo; Abolish the requirement that ships from Zhejiang and Fujian must pass through Beigang to go to Southeast Asia; Goods that have already been taxed in mainland ports should not be taxed again when they are sold in Beigang, etc.

Hearing the latter condition, Zhu Youzhen subconsciously looked at Zheng Zhilong, and Zheng Zhilong hurriedly stood up and defended himself: "Then how can it be called paying taxes?" This is agreed by the Taiwan government, and 40% of the construction costs of the Beigang market are handed over to the Taiwan government.

In addition, let you dock at the North Port Pier, first, to facilitate the inspection of contraband; Second, it is also to facilitate our Taiwan Strait Patrol Office to send ships to protect you, so that you can form a team to go to Manila and various Nanyang ports to trade, so that you will not be attacked by pirates..."

Zheng Zhilong's defense suddenly made some maritime merchants speechless, but Zhu Youzhen was not confused by him, it was obviously inappropriate to double taxation, and he did not submit an application to the imperial court.

After Zheng Zhilong finished speaking, Zhu Youzhen said softly: "No matter how many reasons Zheng Xunyue has, since someone has put it forward, we must seriously review it to see if there are any flaws in this matter."

In my opinion, the tax affairs of Beigang are still reviewed by the customs to see if there is really a double taxation, and if so, it will be cancelled if it should be cancelled, and it will be refunded if it should be refunded.

As for merchant ships heading to Southeast Asia from the port north of Xiamen, I feel that there is nothing wrong with the requirement that they must dock at the North Port. Although it is a bit of a problem for you personally, it is still necessary to look beyond the horizon and form a fleet to act together.

I think it is necessary to ask the ship insurance company to issue a statement that any ship that does not obey the arrangements of the patrol offices and leaves the trade route without permission will not be compensated for the loss of its ships and cargo, and the casualties will be compensated. However, ships that have received a mission to explore new routes before setting sail are not covered by this rule. ”

The emperor wanted to send someone to take back his taxing power in Beigang, and although Zheng Zhilong was a little unhappy, he still decided to obey first. And the representatives of the merchants who put forward their opinions exchanged opinions with each other's eyes, and then expressed their willingness to accept the emperor's opinion to Chongzhen.

So everyone focused their attention on the issue of ship money and security deposit, for these two problems, Zhu Youzhen also felt a little embarrassed, although the collection of ship money was high, but he could only receive one-third, and the other two-thirds was used to subsidize the pirates who were recruited.

Due to the change in the collection method, the number of banknotes this year has increased significantly compared to previous years. But for these maritime merchants, it is obviously a little unbearable. Although because of the recruitment of the Eighteen Zhi Pirate Group, the security at sea has greatly improved, allowing them to save a lot of costs.

But in previous years, they had to confess when they encountered pirates at sea, and they could not resist this loss, so they could not protest. But this year was different, all the money was taken away by the emperor. The merchants felt a pain in their flesh at once, and they did not dare to protest to the pirates, but they were quite comfortable protesting to the emperor.

As soon as they think that they have already paid taxes, they should not raise the standard of ship money to more than 10 times the previous one. Second, under the propaganda of the Donglin Party, everyone in the world felt that it seemed that businessmen should not pay taxes, and the emperor personally sent people to collect taxes, which was even more out of the right way to govern the country and loot people's wealth.

Although Chongzhen did not agree with the reasons for these businessmen to see the hell, these businessmen protested and did not take action to resist taxes, which still made him like this attitude.

As long as he can receive taxes, he is not averse to having these merchants call twice. However, on the bright side, he did not intend to force these merchants, lest they fall to those stubborn gentry and wealthy merchants who insisted on the ban on the sea.

Besides, he ordered a security deposit to be levied according to the size of the ship. For ships below 200 materials, pay a deposit of 400 materials for ships, and for ships above materials, 3,000 taels.

The 400-material vessel has a displacement of about 260 tons and a deadweight of about 130 tons. Most of the Ming merchant ships are small ships with a load of 90-130 tons, and only a few large ships with a load of 2,000 materials, that is, large merchant ships with a load of about 650 tons.

The main reason for this situation is that the larger the vessel, the greater the investment, and the slower the return of funds. After all, except for a few ports in Japan and Manila, the market capacity of other offshore ports is limited, and once too many goods are transported, it will cause the local market price to fall, resulting in losses.

This kind of 90-130 ton ship can easily get rid of all the goods once they arrive at the port, and there is no need to wait for time for large customers to come. In addition, the target of the boat at sea is also small, and it is easy to turn around and flee after spotting a pirate.

As a result, the Southern Customs registered and collected deposits for 675 merchant ships, of which 432 were ships of up and down 100 tons. The deposit collected by the central bank collected nearly one million taels from these shipowners alone.

With that in mind, he was embarrassed to be too them. After thinking for a long time, Chongzhen said to everyone: "As for the issue of ship tax and security deposit you just mentioned, I will definitely study it carefully and give you an answer." But give me a little time, so that when we meet tomorrow, I will definitely give you an answer..."

Although the emperor did not reply directly, the emperor's willingness to go back and think about it had already made these merchants very excited.

They felt that as long as the emperor could think about their request and give a formal reply, it meant that their visit to Beijing was not in vain.

After all, they didn't expect that these problems could be solved in one go. They simply hoped that they would be able to set a precedent and ensure that the emperor would have such a line of communication with them.

As long as they continue to try, they believe that one day, the emperor will make concessions to this.