According to the Fourth Session of the Twelfth National People's Congress Conference of Yunnan Province, Yunnan will focus on speeding up the development of minority areas in 2016, and Dechen and Nujiang will be the first to implement 14 years of free education all the way from pre-school through high school.

The provincial governor Chen Hao explained that in 2016, Yunnan will focus on speeding up economic promotional programs for poor townships with small ethnic group populations by supporting rural construction in ethnic poverty areas through building of kindergartens and also by improving ethnic schools, per student use of public funds as well as students' living allowances.

Chen Hao stated that Dechen and Nujiang will be the first to implement complete fee coverage from pre-school through high school for a total of 14 years for all students.

Yunnan had already started to implement a pilot program fully covering free vocational education in these two areas, and the implementation of the 14-year free education policy will further promote local education based poverty alleviation.

In addition, for the protection of ethnic culture and heritage, Yunnan will implement what is called "Double Hundred" projects related to ethnic culture to speed up creation of minority cultural resource databases, the project will also support regional efforts having good potential apply for world cultural heritage recognition, strengthen renowned historical and cultural cities, towns, villages, and streets, bring into action a geographic location name protection project, and furthermore grasp and arrange minority text to translate and publish them.