Concepts from Beyond the Realm and the Transformation of Local Governance: The Political Design and Participation of the Chinese Intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s

Author: Deng Lilan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-11-01
Features: When modern China introduced Western political systems, it coincided with the decline of the Western parliamentary democratic system into a period of peak decline. In the first half of the 20th century, the wave of reforming representative systems in Europe and America deeply influenced Sun Yat-sen and the constitutional ideas of Chinese intellectual elites, as well as the political system reforms of the Nanjing government. The debate over "reforming representative systems" or "returning to representative systems" centered around the drafting of the "May Fifth Constitution" between the constitutionalists of the Three Principles of the People and the Westernized constitutionalists. The political debates in the intellectual circles involved constitutional salvation, democracy and authoritarianism, administrative reform, the five-housing system, and more, with the entanglement of "personnel" and "systems". Establishing a strong government and achieving administrative modernization became a consensus among all factions. The political reforms of the Nanjing government followed the form of the "expert cabinet" in Europe and America, but were rigidly bound by the "five-housing system" and unable to move toward systemic change. This period of constitutional history is a replay of the "democratic self-immolation" phenomenon worldwide in China. The tortuous history of constitutionalism in the Republic of China reveals the difficulty of a traditional great power on the path to democracy, demonstrating that the transplantation of systems should draw on the long-tested achievements of human civilization, and that the cultivation of systems is not an overnight success but requires a process of nurturing.