What is the policy of returning native land to rural areas?

The policy of reforming the native land and returning it to the local people is to abolish the chieftain system in various ethnic minority areas in the southwest, and to replace it with the central government appointing exiled officials to directly rule, and implement the same local administrative system as in the mainland. In a narrow sense, it refers to the reform implemented in the six southwest provinces of Yunnan, Qian, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, and Hubei during the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty to abolish the chieftain system and establish governance by floating officials. ?

Since the Yongzheng period, the Qing government has implemented the policy of "returning natives to locals" on a large scale in the southwest, gradually abolishing the hereditary system of chieftains, appointing fixed-term and transferable officials, and subsequently conducting household registration checks. , measuring land, verifying taxes and other work. The reform of native land and return to local rule strengthened the Qing government's management of various ethnic groups in the southwest, broke the ethnic restrictions of the original chieftain system that "barbarians could not leave the cave, and Han people could not enter the country", and promoted ethnic integration as well as local economic development and social progress. An important policy to unify the governance, territorial expansion and consolidation of a multi-ethnic feudal country.

Direct Cause

The toast system has played a certain positive role in the context of low productivity, inconvenient transportation, and huge differences in national culture. However, chieftains have been officials for generations and have dominated one area. Some chieftains are tyrannical and lawless, carrying out political oppression and economic plunder of the people within their borders. Chieftains have provoked armed fights or wars for power and profit, resulting in loss of life and rebellion against the court.

In the 18th year of Shunzhi (1661), Zhao Tingchen, the governor of Yunnan and Guizhou, reported: "The fields in Yunnan and Guizhou are barren and must be reclaimed urgently. There will be barren fields with owners who will be reclaimed by the owners, and fields without owners will be reclaimed by the people." After three years of study, the prefecture and county gave him a seal of approval, and he became his own business forever. "The Ministry of Household Affairs decided to follow it. Gao Qizhuo, the later governor of Yunnan and Guizhou, also said in his memorial: Immigrating to minority areas to reclaim wasteland "can enrich the place and change Luo customs." Therefore, the imperial court implemented preferential policies such as tax cuts and loans of seeds and cattle to farmers who moved to Yunnan, which greatly promoted immigration activities and land reclamation and farming. In some areas, the government also recruited immigrants to reclaim wasteland in mountainous or remote areas. For example, in the second year of Yongzheng's reign (1724), Gao Qizhuo, the governor of Yunnan and Guizhou, recruited people to reclaim hundreds of miles of open land along the upper reaches of the Nu River. This was the first example of large-scale reclamation in the upper reaches of the Nu River in northwest Yunnan. beginning. But in some Tusi areas, immigration policies have been hampered.

In the fourth year of Yongzheng (1726), Ertai, the governor of Yunnan, made this very clear. His advice was changed to Shuyun: "Yunnan and Guizhou are in serious trouble, nothing like the Miao barbarians. If you want to stabilize the people, you must first control the barbarians. If you want to control the barbarians, you must first control them. "The barbarians must change the soil and return to the countryside"; no one dares to enter the land where Tumu is entrenched, such as the Dongchuan area where "the civil and military forces have long resided in the provincial capital, and no one dares to cultivate land for four hundred miles"; the chieftain forces are rampant in the area connecting the four provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Guangxi. When things happened, the provinces pushed each other to blame, and it was difficult to go deep into the governance. The barbarians inside and outside the Lancang River in southern Yunnan "had nothing to do with the internal affairs, but had things to do with foreign countries." From the Yuan to the Ming Dynasty, they "acted as a frontier harm". Ertai believes that if the method is corrected, "it will be effective and will benefit the border defense of Yunnan and Guizhou for centuries."

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