A closer look
Salt in 18th-century China was essentially white gold, and the government controlled every single grain of it. The Lianghuai salt merchants of Yangzhou were absurdly wealthy cartel bosses who operated under strict Qing dynasty licenses. To maintain their insanely profitable monopoly, they continuously bribed the imperial court by 'voluntarily' financing Emperor Qianlong's expensive military expeditions and funding his opulent southern inspection tours. It was a perfectly legal extortion racket where the Emperor outsourced his military budget to sodium tycoons.
