Review On The Senatorial Election Of Shanghai Municipal Council In 1946

In the light of Sun Yat-sen’s thoughts on regime, Nanjing National Government began to try setting up a council of local autonomy after it was founded in 1927. The senators of the local council were appointed by the government during the provisional period while the formal ones were elected by the people. As a landmark of local autonomous body, the establishment and operation of the local council not only represents the practice of modern system of local autonomy, but also acts as a sign of its autonomous level of Nanjing KMT Government. What’s more, in the process of setting up the council-the local autonomous body, the orientations and functions of various social factors are revealed by surveying the election process, by which we can have a profound and systematic understanding of Nanjing National Government’s trend of political system from one side.The first session of Shanghai Municipal Council, founded in 1946, has been the first council of the people of real sense ever since local autonomy was implemented in Shanghai in 1905. It came into being in the form of universal suffrage beyond the narrow scope of the early similar institutions restricted to the gentry and elite. It lasted for three years, was the core of stability for Shanghai to face the social chaos and turmoil, and at the same time, the experimenting place for local parliamentary politics of China. Therefore, it is extremely necessary to make a further and systematical research, especially an empirical one, into the senatorial election of the First Shanghai Municipal Council.On the basis of sufficient and reliable first-hand sources, great attempts are made, in a macro sense, to examine the election in the context of post-war reconstruction of Shanghai while from a microscopic perspective, the earlier research paradigm is broken, in which attention was paid more to system than to practice. In addition, every effort is made to “relive” the history of the election as objectively as possible in order to reveal a variety of parts that different kinds of people played in the given network of authority and to dig the genuine historical factors screened by the earlier researches conducted in a static, institutional and structural way. Based on the study, the corresponding perspectives are put forward. Its coverage and organization in general are as follows:Introduction: The elaborations of the basis of choosing a topic, research status, research subjects, perspectives, ideas and methods, as well as major references etc.Chapter 1: Local autonomy and senatorial election since the late Qing Dynasty. Concerning the brewing, raising and practicing of local autonomy thought after the Opium War, it is traced back by means of surveying the establishment of the bureau of consultation of local deliberation institution and senatorial election in late Qing Dynasty, province-level council during the period of Beijing Regiment of Republican China, local council and its emergence and evolution during Nanjing National Government. Local autonomy, as a kind of thought, originated from Shanghai. The pioneering spirit that Shanghainese possess accelerated western political thoughts into China, and became the impetus to convert thoughts into practice. Therefore, speaking of local autonomy, we should first start from Shanghai, the leader in this area. The local autonomous body went through several stages such as Chinese Municipal Council of Shanghai and Shanghai City Autonomy Association in the late Qing Dynasty, Consultative Council of Beiyang Government, together with council and provisional council of Nanjing National Government. After the victory over Japan, Shanghai Municipal government was ordered to establish a provisional council as a transition on 28 March, 1946. And the first democratic election was held in 26 April that year.Chapter 2: Starting from the laws and rules about the senatorial election of Shanghai Municipal Council, this chapter focuses on the preparation and election process. Based on relevant laws and rules of Nanjing National Government and combining with the rules of Shanghai Municipal Government, this paper gives a clear description of the electoral method and qualification, election procedure and voting rules, laws and rules on vote acknowledgement and election lawsuit. Besides, the paper shows whether the preparation work of Shanghai senatorial election is sufficient, open and reasonable by examining establishment of autonomous body, restructure of Bao-jia system and census, registration of voters and qualification examination of candidates, venue and staffing, as well as distribution of votes. Furthermore, in combination with the publicity measures taken by Shanghai Municipal Government, social media and all walks of life in the senatorial election, it is focused on examining and analyzing candidates’ campaign mode and content.Chapter 3: The Senatorial Election of the First Session of the Shanghai Municipal Council. First, in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations of Shanghai senatorial elections and the overt archives and newspapers, a comprehensive examination is made into the regional senatorial election in Shanghai and the primary election and the runoff of the professional groups so that whether the senators undertook standard elections can be investigated. What’s more, the senators’ background is analyzed from the sociological perspective. The natural features such as the age, sex, native place and educational background are taken into full consideration. And the social experience and the working state are given priority to in the research, including family background, social identity and political faction, which are used to give a direct presentation of the social roles of the senators, whereupon it is feasible to interpret the underlying causes behind the maneuver among various political groupings and the ultimate winning of the senators.Chapter 4: Analysis and Evaluation. To begin with, the election regulations for the senators in the Shanghai Municipal Council serve as the starting point. The cases in the electoral process, especially the electoral lawsuits, are analyzed, by means of which the implementation of the regulations in the democratic practice is examined. The conditions, causes, efficiency and functions related to publicizing the election are analyzed by examining the measures taken by certain departments in the government, social media, the local celebrities and the social communities. The analyses of the challenges in all walks of life to the violation of the rules in the election and the realization of right maintaining elaborate the gradual visibility of the legal consciousness of the general public. All this shows that the election in the Shanghai Municipal Council was mainly directed to democratic, fair and open political orientation. Furthermore, the nature is explored in relation to such phenomena as the inconsistency of the number and the qualifications of the voters, the serious loss of the votes and the like. In the meantime, the analyses are also associated with such community as the voters, candidates, the leaders of the Shanghai municipal authority and the staff themselves. Many phenomena are clarified concerning what the senators did against democracy in the election, which revealed much default in management. Finally, party controls and the deeper causes behind them are probed into in combination with the unofficial decision made by the senators in the election and the consequent violation of the rules of a certain number of staff.Conclusion: Basically speaking, it is concluded that the election of the first session of the Shanghai Municipal Council was legalized, standardized and publicized. However, the serious alienation occurred when the election was under way, in which kinds of malpractices were involved. The problem arose from the manipulation of the party and the government, the social conditions such as the disparities in the voters’ educational background as well as the managerial negligence. In reality, the inharmonious democratic atmosphere in the election in question reflected the political literacy of the local citizens and the disordered management. Based on what is analyzed above, the corresponding proposals are put forward as follows. Implementing democracy is determined by the inseparability of self-consciousness and self-respect of the high-quality people and the improvement of the supervising systems of the government. Therefore, genuine democracy requires training and education, the most effective of which consists in practice rather than verbal and written forms. In this sense, there is a long way to go before the ideal goal is achieved.