Yong was the most severe anti-corruption emperor of the Qing Dynasty, and during his thirteen-year reign, he arrested a large number of corrupt officials, the official atmosphere was greatly improved, and the imperial court also saved a lot of silver. The local overseers knew Yongzheng's temper and tried their best to give the emperor silver.
Zu Binggui, the newly appointed Erpin supervisor of guangdong customs, was first the emperor's coat, and he has been diligently and earnestly running errands for the emperor, and finally sent this fat and oily beauty messenger. In order to repay the emperor's grace, Zu Binggui decided to check the accounts of the Guangdong Customs carefully, if he could save money for the emperor, wouldn't it be a great achievement?
Sure enough, Zu Binggui found that the Guangdong Customs had a "silver payment of official fees", which was an additional fee charged by the Guangdong Customs to foreigners and merchant ships in addition to the customs duties stipulated by the imperial court, nominally the office expenses of the scribes and miscellaneous servants. This amount of money is not a small amount, in 1729, that is, the seventh year of Yongzheng received 13752 taels of silver, and the eighth year of Yongzheng was as much as 18076 taels.
Zu Binggui looked down on these scribes and miscellaneous servants in his heart, although the official government could not do without these people, but they all belonged to the identity of the people, and they should already be grateful to Dade, and what bicycles, no, what "pay official public fees and silver".
With a big stroke of his pen, Zu Binggui really handed over the "silver for paying official fees" to the officials and handed them over to Yongzheng. Of course, the emperor was pleased, although compared with the annual tariff of the Guangdong Customs, the amount of silver was not large, but it could prove that Zu Binggui was anti-greedy and worthy of praise.
After receiving praise from the emperor, when Zu Binggui was happily looking forward to a better future, the governor of Liangguang, Emida, suddenly sued Zu Binggui for issuing a pass for a foreigner merchant ship smuggling red copper and collecting benefits from it.
Yongzheng was furious, red copper is the necessary raw material for casting copper coins, China has a serious shortage of copper, has been imported from Japan, need to spend a lot of silver, now it is difficult to find a little copper in Yunnan, naturally it is very precious.
Therefore, the imperial court repeatedly ordered that it was forbidden to sell red copper out of the country, and the offender was guilty of capital punishment. Zu Binggui actually colluded with foreign businessmen to smuggle copper out of the country, which is really an unforgivable crime. After Yongzheng sent people to investigate, he ordered Zu Binggui's home to be raided and sentenced to a prison and beheaded.
How would Emida know that Zu Binggui was smuggling copper? It was because someone had informed him, and the informant was none other than a scribe from the Guangdong Customs. Zu Binggui handed over the "silver for paying official fees" to the emperor and cut off the financial road of the scribe, and the original scribe could get 159 taels of silver per year, which was equivalent to the salary of the Erpin official.
The resentful scribe collected evidence of Zu Binggui's smuggling of red copper and then provided it to his political enemy Emida, thus bringing down the guangdong customs in one fell swoop. The successors have learned their lessons, how can the officials not be sympathetic to their subordinates? Of course, the "payment of official public funds and silver" cannot be moved, and the courage to find another name to collect some money from foreign businessmen is still there.