The content and significance of the Yongzheng reforms
Historical Background During the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty, the system of landlords was abolished in some of the minority areas in the Southwest China, and political reforms were carried out in the form of exiled officials. The system of landlords, which had been practiced since the Yuan Dynasty, was plagued with many problems. The landlords ruled their subjects brutally internally, rebelled against the central government and harassed the Han Chinese who bordered on them, and wars were constantly waged among the landlords. In order to solve the long-standing problems of the Tusi system, most of the rulers of the Ming and Qing dynasties advocated the policy of reorganizing the land and returning it to the countryside. That is, where conditions were ripe, the abolition of the hereditary system of the Tusi, the establishment of the government, the hall, the state, the county, the dispatch of a certain term of office of the exiled officials to manage. During the period of Kangxi, Yongqian and Qianlong, the Qing Dynasty was strong, and Emperor Yongzheng was an enterprising monarch, so the conditions were ripe for the large-scale implementation of the policy of land reclassification. Specific process In the fourth year of the Yongzheng period (1726), the governor of Yunnan and Guizhou, Ertai, wrote several times to comprehensively explain the necessity of the reclassification of land into exile, and asked for the immediate implementation of the program. He suggested that the lawless tribal chiefs should be captured by tactics and suppressed by soldiers; that they should be made to surrender voluntarily and be ordered to accept the land; and that soldiers should be used, but not exclusively. He wanted to use military force but not exclusively. He wanted to use force as a deterrent and tried to solve the problem by political means. He asked for the adjustment of the unreasonable administrative divisions on the borders of the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan in order to unify the authority and enable the local officials to act according to the circumstances. Emperor Yongzheng appreciated this and asked him to handle it carefully. In May of the same year, the rebellion of the Guizhou Changzhai Tusi was firstly pacified and the Changzhai Hall (now Changshun, Guizhou) was established. Soon after, the Qing court transferred the three local governments of Wumeng, Zhenxiong and Dongchuan, which originally belonged to Sichuan, to Yunnan. Ertai sent the guerrilla Ha Yuansheng to lead the troops to destroy the power of the rebel Wumeng land governor Lu Wanzhong and Zhenxiong land governor Long Qinghou, and reorganized the Wumeng Prefecture (later renamed Zhaotong Prefecture, present Zhaotong, Yunnan) and Zhenxiong Prefecture. The great momentum of the reorganization of Yunnan and Guizhou was soon felt in Guangxi. In the fifth year, the Qing court dismissed the governor of Sicheng as a deterrent, and set up Yongfeng Prefecture (present-day Zhenfeng Buyi Miao Autonomous County, Guizhou) in the area north of the Nanpanjiang River, which was under the jurisdiction of Guizhou. Emperor Yongzheng appointed Ertai as the governor of the three provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi at the end of the sixth year for the purpose of unifying and planning the affairs of the reclassification of Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi. In the same year, Zhang Guangsi, the governor of Guizhou, was ordered to carry out the policy of land reorganization in Southeast Guizhou. Zhang Guangsi led troops into the villages of Miao, Dong and other ethnic groups in Guzhou, Liping Province (now Rongjiang, Guizhou) and Danjiang, Duyun Province (now Leishan, Guizhou), and set up halls, set up the Tongzhi, and took care of the civil affairs. The Tusi of Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan provinces bordering Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi were originally close to the mainland and had limited power. Under the pressure of the situation, they requested to hand over their hereditary territories and Tusi seals and return them to the central government. Thus, the villages and counties were reorganized under the management of the provincial governors. When the hereditary system was abolished, different treatments were accorded to the Tusi themselves according to their attitudes. Those who surrendered their seals voluntarily were rewarded by being given a hereditary post or a military post. For those who resisted, they were punished by confiscating their properties and moving them to the interior provinces other than the six provinces mentioned above, and were given farms and houses to arrange for their living. In the establishment of prefectures and counties, additional military organizations were set up, such as the addition of the town of Wumeng in Yunnan, the town of Zhaotong Xiongwei and the town of Pu'er Yuanwei, the addition of the town of Guzhou and the town of Taigong in Guizhou, the establishment of the town of Right River in Guangxi, and the addition of the association of Yongshun and Yongsui to Hunan and Guangdong. The Qing government in the area of land reorganization and relegation, the household survey, measuring land, collecting taxes, building cities, setting up schools, the original land tributary only pay very little tribute, and will be brutal plundering of the belonging to the people of a large amount of silver received by the full collection of their own. After the reorganization, the method of taxation was changed, and the original system of collecting taxes by the land division was abolished. Like the mainland, taxes were collected according to the acres of land, and the amount of taxes was generally less than that of the mainland. The amount of tax was generally less than that of the mainland. The exploitation of the natives was slightly reduced. The area of land reorganization included six provinces, namely, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan and Hubei, among which the area of Guizhou Province was as extensive as the area of the original prefectures and counties. There were many ethnic groups involved in this process, including the Zhuang, the Yi, the Miao, the Hani, the Buyi, the Dong, the Yao, and the Shui. After the reorganization, some of the upper class of the Tozas were not willing to accept the defeat and tried to revive the country all the time. Some Qing troops looted and plundered in the new areas, and some officials were not good at management, and suddenly increased taxes and levies, and they themselves were corrupt and extortionate. In addition, most of the new camps and floods from the neighboring areas, resulting in the original area of the strength of the void. This not only gave the original Tusi the opportunity to rebel, but also gave them a chance to take advantage of the situation. In the spring of the 13th year, the upper class of the Miao people in the Guzhou and Taigong areas of Guizhou mobilized the people to start a rebellion. The rebels penetrated into Danjiang, Huangping, Kaili and other counties, and Emperor Yongzheng sent troops to suppress the rebellion. After the Qianlong Emperor succeeded to the throne, he appointed Zhang Guangsi as the Secretary of the Seven Provinces, and in the first year of the Qianlong Emperor's reign (1736), the rebellion was pacified, and the Qing court ordered the abolition of taxes in the new area, and the trial of civil disputes according to the local customs, in order to consolidate the rule of the area where the land was converted to the flow of water. During the Yongzheng Dynasty, the reclassification was only practiced in some of the southwestern ethnic minority areas, and there were still many areas that had not been reclassified. (According to the Qing Historical Manuscripts (清史稿), 1986 edition, Volume XIII, Zhi 95, Foodstuffs I of the Household and Field System (食货一之户田制), page 3482, "Gansu Fanshi Tumin, obliged the Secretary of State to investigate" in the 22nd year of the Qianlong era, which can be quoted as a corroborative evidence). Even in the case of the reclassification, the remnants of the original Tusi were still retained, and they were still able to control the original subjects to varying degrees. However, the reclassification abolished the Tusi system, reduced the factors of rebellion, strengthened the central government's rule over the borders, and was conducive to the socio-economic development of the ethnic minority areas, and had a positive significance for the unification of the multi-ethnic state of China and the development of its economic and cultural development.