Through the Late Imperial period, the Chinese frontier policy served the “centering” function of the traditional tributary system. Ideally, the Chinese court’s southwestern frontier administration sought to introduce to its “uncultured” inhabitants all the benefits of life at the “civilized” center. To be precise, the Chinese court managed its southwestern frontier at a fair distance through the successive systems of “loose rein (jimi 羁糜) and, by the early Ming, “native chieftain (tusi 土司)” regulation. These frontier systems of administration were intended to signal to those communities “beyond” the civilized core to join the center. These systems were not dependent on the extraction of local resources for its continuation. Gifts from the frontier were regarded as appropriate acts of submission, and so they were placed in the context of the larger tribute system. Despite occasional problems, Chinese leaders deemed these systems of frontier management sufficient for many centuries. As Robert Jenks notes in his study of the Miao of Guizhou, Chinese officials saw no reason to abolish the tusi system as late as the Yongzheng period (mid-18th century), and that many hereditary positions remained even into the 20th century.