Study Of Chinese Modern Constitutional Thought

It is the Chinese national survival crisis threatened by the strong military force from the west in modern China that had eventually made the Chinese people commence accepting the values of constitutionalism. However, the Chinese found it difficult to trace back the origin and flux of the western constitutionalism on account of that they had to be obsessed with the major problems of their racial survival, national richness and military strength. As a result, the Chinese ignored the cultural originality of the western constitutionalism at length. Unavoidably, they had amputated the correlation between contexts of the western constitutionalism and its culture to construct a "new" relationship to meet need of the national renaissance. The constitutionalism in the west is assumed to be analogous with "tao" in the Chinese traditional culture. It was, however, transformed to "qi" in modern China, which is supposed to serve the national renaissance and richness. Consequently, the fundamental value of constitutionalism by the Chinese is oriented to how to achieve the national recovery instead of to realize the social justice. The Chinese regarded constitutionalism as a means to how to centralize the state power to be a leading strength in course of the national recovery rather than to de-centralize the state power to protect the individual rights and freedom. In conclusion, the essence of western constitutionalism lies in the "individual" as opposed to the "collective-oriented" by the trend of constitutional thought in modern China. The Chinese liberalism originated from the "May Fourth New Cultural Movement" and some noted liberals represented eminently by Dr Hu Shi had never become the main trend of constitutional thought in modern China although it had inquired the cultural context of constitutionalism based on the human value. As a matter of fact, this liberalism itself embraced the conception of profound nationalism. Therefore, the norm of "richness-and-strength-as-a-purpose, constitutionalism-as-a-tool" has been assumed to be one of the almost important models within the trend of Chinese constitutional thought, which had caused the Chinese to find it rather uneasy that they took a scientific way to meditate their own cultural tradition and to face the west reasonably. With its distinction from the originality of constitutionalism, it is noted that the Chinese model of constitutionalism would dilute of what the constitutionalism is for the meaningfulness of human being. As a consequence, the thought of Chinese constitutionalism has its own distinctive cultural characteristics at its beginning as opposed to the west.Little research into the trend of constitutional thought in modern China sees a comparative thinness of legal history study. After reading and mastering a large volume of information and materials, the author attempts to further argue the Chinese contitutionalism's commence, development process, context, characteristics and values with the comparative method and the thinking way of "open-mindedness", which is expected to demonstrate explicitly the distinctive formation model of the trend of Chinese constitutional thought, and what it is next.This dissertation consists of an introduction, six chapters and a conclusion. In the introduction part, the correlation of constitutionalism with democracy and republic is elaborated with some major conceptions related to constitutionalism by the west. Based on such analysis, the obsessing problems of why and to what extent the constitutionalism is needed are inquired and given their responses. It is concluded that the justifications of which the Chinese and the western constitutionalism are quite different resulted from distinctiveness of the Chinese constitutional thoughts.Chapter One The Hurt Traditional Universe It is the Utopia War when the Chinese started to learn from the west at large. During the process, the western learning was pounding on the Chinese traditional learning, at the same time, the Confucianism was antagonizing the Occidental le...