Yifeng Reforms

Yifeng Reforms (溢豐改革) is a list of reforms lead by the Chinese Emperor Yifeng. The Self Strengthening Movement in 1861 was what pushed Emperor Yifeng into doing these reforms. The movement helped to modernise the Chinese Army and Navy eventually putting down the Taiping Rebellion in 1864. The success of the Self Strengthening Movement inspired Emperor Yifeng to start reform within the government and the society.

Reforms
To better modernise the Chinese society, Emperor Yifeng have started many new reforms such as Western-styled military academy, foreign language schools, construction of factories and dockyards as well as sending students to foriegn countries to study their technology and economy. Not only that Yifeng also made new railway lines and evolved the country into a western styled capitalist country.

Education
Emperor Yifeng started to build new schools includeing military academy and foreign language schools. Teachers from other countries were hired to teach the students English, French and German and the best students were sent to the UK, US or France to continue their studies. The core idea of this was that the students would return back to China with their new found knowledge to strengthen China and better protect their home country.

Economy
Not just the education was changed, the economy was changed as well. The country created a central government bank known as the Imperial Bank of China and the creation of a unified paper currency known as the Qing Dollars. Other than that, the government created new tax reforms in order to bring a stream of revenue to the Chinese government. The country was slowly transformed into a capitalistic Laissez-faire format economy similar to the west at that time.

Government
The government had a major change as well. The government changed the viceroyalties into provinces with 10 prefectures while also creating 5 new viceroyalties with their own government similar to an autonomous region. The five viceroyalties are all on the borderland, Mongolia, Yunnan, Dongbei, Xinjiang and Tibet. The provinces have their own regional army. The government also introduced a senate where every viceroyalty have 4 seats and every provinces have 2 seats as well as a house of lords. A chancellory was also created to give advice to the Emperor in matters of government. The government was slowly transformed into the one in United Kingdoms. Not only that, an official national flag and anthem was created.

Military
Following the footsteps of the Self Strengthening Movement, the Green Standards Army as well as the banners were beginning to modernise with support from the emperor himself. Military spending increased drastically in order to purchase foreign equipement to modernise the military.