The army is the foundation of political stability, and to seize the army is to seize everything in Yunnan.

The current situation of the army is what Li Yi is most dissatisfied with, and their old style and ruffian habits make him very worried.

Therefore, Li Yi decided to take advantage of the large influx of hungry people from southern Sichuan into Yunnan, and carried out a drastic reform of the army under the pretext of replenishing troops.

First of all, through extensive publicity, the victims of the disaster in southern Sichuan were widely felt.

In this peaceful and prosperous era of Yunnan, there is no war itself, so it is a very secure thing to be a soldier and eat food, and they are willing to be soldiers, and then they want to be soldiers and rush to be soldiers.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, more than 3,700 honest and strong soldiers were quickly selected and recruited, and a number of outstanding combat talents were also discovered among them.

Some of them were sent to various customs defenses for training, and some of the outstanding ones were enriched to serve as personal soldiers in the Xuanfu Embassy's mansion.

Li Yi believes that after a period of running-in, these people will be the backbone of the army in the future.

Second, through appraisal and evaluation, more than 5,000 old, weak, sick, and disabled posts have been eliminated and eliminated, thus making room for the optimal combination of the army.

Among them, some officers and men who had no respect for their superiors, had ruffian habits, and had a lazy style were dismissed, and all of them were sent home after being paid decommissioning pay.

Thirdly, most of the other people who have been removed from the various customs clearances are older people with heavier family burdens.

Some soldiers who were decent and in good physical condition were selected and assigned to serve as officials and arresters in the yamen of various prefectures and counties.

In this way, it can not only give full play to their residual heat, but also solve their worries about life to some extent.

Finally, after more than a month of optimization, adjustment, and integration, the appearance of the army has undergone tremendous changes.

The officers accepted this reform ideologically, began to intensify their training in an orderly manner, and reorganized the army's work style and combat effectiveness.

The soldiers who had stayed behind also had a sense of crisis, and their enthusiasm for training had increased unprecedentedly.

The newcomers were even more unwilling to be reconciled, and quickly integrated into the collective of the army.

In terms of economic reform, Li Yi guided the people to promulgate a series of measures.

In particular, in terms of commercial circulation, we should encourage all localities to establish commercial ports, actively expand commodity trade channels with other places, and reduce transaction tax rates, so as to attract merchants from all over the world to do business in Yunnan.

In terms of handicrafts, Li Yi took bold encouragement measures to affirm the status of handicraftsmen, eliminate people's prejudice against them, and improve the enthusiasm and creativity of handicraftsmen in technological innovation.

Although the results have not yet been seen, it is believed that it will not be long before Yunnan's handicraft industry will enter a new period.

In agriculture, measures have been promulgated to vigorously reward cultivation and weaving, and through government subsidies, people have been encouraged to actively reclaim barren mountains and wastelands and expand planting varieties.

Cotton and wheat, in particular, have been extended to many places, although the proportion of planted area is still very limited.

But as long as you work hard for a few years, you will definitely have quite good results.

At present, Yunnan is still poor and white, and there is still a lot to do.

'Everything should be centered on the economy' is the slogan put forward by Li Yi, and the purpose is of course to ask people to shift their main energies to economic development at the present stage.

Only by boosting the economy can the people live a prosperous life, consider the needs of other levels, and continue to promote the development of Yunnan in all aspects in a virtuous circle.

It is undeniable that in economic development, in fact, the issue of education is very important.

'Knowledge is power', 'Knowledge can change people's destiny', 'With knowledge, there is wealth'.

Li Yi continued to use these slogans to inspire people at the small meetings of the conference, and implemented them in Yunnan's reform through positive measures of being responsible at all levels and with everyone's participation.

Due to the limited conditions in Yunnan and the lack of coverage, the Yunnan government encourages qualified localities to run their own schools and absorb children from nearby areas.

In addition, if the school allows the children of the poor in the vicinity to study for free, the government will provide appropriate subsidies according to the number of children who participate in the school for free.

In backward areas and areas where the poor live, all funds are paid by the government.

Depending on the size of the village and the size of the population, a centralized school may be set up in one village or one in several villages, and all school-age children must be enrolled in the nearest school, and no one shall be left out.

And this is listed as one of the main bases for evaluating the performance of officials, and they cannot help but devote themselves to it.

Education is not an industry but a career, and no matter how poor you are, you can't be poor in education.

Whether it is a government subsidy or a government directly setting up a school, it doesn't actually cost much money.

It is said that the ancients also attached great importance to education, but the people who could afford to read were only a minority, and under the influence of privileged thinking, the poor had far fewer opportunities for education.

Therefore, this tentative five-year responsibility education must be carried out at the grassroots level and in the marginal mountainous areas, and this is a hard target.

The aim of this will not only lead to a significant reduction in the illiteracy rate, but also enable a considerable number of poor people to get out of poverty and become rich through education, and even to discover and train useful talents.

This is a good thing for the benefit of the country and the people, and it must be carried out for a long time and continuously.

The highest-ranking education official in Yunnan is the Doctor of Letters, whose grade is only from the eighth grade, although it is one level higher than the ninth grade of the Doctor of Medicine.

However, it can also be seen from this that the imperial court is actually only interested in military affairs and taxation, and does not pay enough attention to education and culture, and the status of officials engaged in education is quite low.

Yuan Guoce, a doctor of literature in Yunnan, is only in his early fifties, and he is a truly learned Confucian.

When he was young, he also had the ambition of helping the world and being born by the people, and he once traveled all over the world to study, but because he was not from a serious academic background, and he was not interested in Sun Decheng's political opinions, he had been depressed in the officialdom, so his heart for learning gradually became cold.

Seeing Li Yi's ambition to carry out education reform this time made him see another glimmer of hope.

Therefore, he was very enthusiastic and worked this matter, and after more than a month of thorough investigation, he soon found out the distribution of the educated population in various prefectures and counties in Yunnan.

According to his statistical analysis, there are about 23,000 school-age children and teenagers between the ages of seven and 15 in Yunnan, including those who have migrated from southern Sichuan.

In addition to the families who can afford to support their students, there are about 15,000 people who need to be funded.

This amount is not small, and the tuition and book fees alone are estimated to reach 20,000 taels of silver per year, not counting the one-time investment in hardware facilities.

With Yunnan's current fiscal revenue, it is indeed a bit difficult to raise this money.

In order to save costs as much as possible, Li Yi mobilized the people in various villages to raise funds to build school buildings, tables, chairs, benches and other things.

Some of the enthusiastic wealthy families in the countryside also donated their houses free of charge and provided a large number of school tables and chairs, which reduced the pressure on the government a lot.