19. Schools were ordered in connection with all the Chinese legations in foreign countries for the benefit of the children of Chinese in those places.
20. Commercial bureaus were ordered in Shanghai for the encouragement of trade.
21. Six useless Boards in Peking were abolished.
22. The right to memorialize the throne in sealed memorials was granted to all who desired to do so.
23. Two presidents and four vice-presidents of the Board of Rites were dismissed for disobeying the Emperor's orders that memorials should be allowed to come to him unopened.
24. The governorships of Hupeh, Kuangtung, and Yunnan were abolished as being a useless expense to the country.
25. Schools of instruction in the preparation of tea and silk were ordered established.
26. The slow courier posts were abolished in favour of the Imperial Customs Post.
27. A system of budgets as in Western countries was approved.
I have given these decrees in this epitomized form so that all those who are interested in the character of this reform movement in China may understand something of the influence the young Emperor's study had had upon him. Grant that they followed one another in too close proximity, yet still it must be admitted by every careful student of them, that there is not one that would not have been of the greatest possible benefit to the country if they had been put into operation. If the Emperor had been allowed to proceed, making them all as effective as he did the Imperial University, and if the ministers and provincial authorities had responded to his call, and had made "some effort to understand what he was trying to do," China might have by this time been close upon the heels of Japan in the adoption of Western ideas.