During the Yongzheng period, the Qing government carried out the policy of "returning the land to the stream" on a large scale in southwest China, gradually abolished the hereditary system of chieftain, appointed the stream officials with tenure, and then carried out the work of household inspection, land measurement and tax verification. Returning home strengthened the Qing government's management of all ethnic groups in southwest China, broke the national imprisonment of the original chieftain system, and promoted national integration, local economic development and social progress, which was an important policy for unified governance of multi-ethnic feudal countries and expansion and consolidation of territory.
Direct cause
The chieftain system has played an active role under the circumstances of low productivity, inconvenient transportation and great national and cultural differences. However, the chieftain has been an official for generations, dominating one side, and some chieftains have acted arbitrarily, breaking the law and discipline, carrying out political oppression and economic plunder on the domestic people, provoking struggles or wars between chieftains for power and profit, leading to the loss of life and the impermanence of the court.
In the eighteenth year of Shunzhi (166 1), Zhao Zou, the governor of Yunnan and Guizhou, said, "The farmland in Yunnan and Guizhou is barren and needs to be reclaimed urgently. There will be a main wasteland reclaimed by the owner, and there will be no main wasteland to recruit people to cultivate species. From the beginning of three years, it is always your own business to give tickets to counties. " The Ministry of the Interior agreed to do so. Later, Gao Qibao, governor of Yunnan-Guizhou Province, also said in his speech that emigrating to minority areas for reclamation "can enrich places and change habits". Therefore, the imperial court gave preferential policies to the farmers who moved to Yunnan, such as tax reduction and loan breeding and cattle release, which greatly promoted immigration activities and reclamation. In some areas, the government also recruits immigrants to reclaim land in mountainous or remote areas. For example, in the second year of Yongzheng (1724), Gao Qichen, the governor of Yunnan, recruited people to reclaim hundreds of miles of land along the upper reaches of the Nujiang River, which was the beginning of large-scale reclamation in the upper reaches of the Nujiang River in northwest Yunnan. However, in some Tusi areas, the immigration policy has been hindered.
In the fourth year of Yongzheng (1726), E Ertai, the governor of Yunnan, made it very clear that his suggestion was to change the flow and divert the clouds: "Yunnan is in great trouble, and there are no seedlings." If you want to stabilize the people, you must first control foreigners. If you want to control foreigners, you must change your soil and return to the flow "; No one dares to enter the land of the earth, such as Dongchuan area, "civil and military officials live in the provincial capital, and no one dares to plow for 400 miles"; In the border areas of Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Guangxi provinces, the chieftain forces are rampant and the governance is not easy to deepen. Foreigners inside and outside the Lancang River in southern Yunnan "have nothing to do with their stomachs, but with foreign countries." From the Yuan Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty, "doing evil on its behalf." E Ertai believes that if the law is changed, "it will be effective and will be conducive to defending the border forever."