Research On The Hunan Provincial Constitution

In the 1920s,the south government confronted with the north one in China.For the purpose of unity or domain,the big and small warlords in all parts of China spread out a life and death struggle.The chaos caused by war made many regions in ravages and make people move in extreme misery.For improving the current political situation at that time,Hunan people proclaimed autonomy in the first place and laid down provincial constitution so that set up a fine example and promote autonomy uniting provinces and realize the unity of China.The Hunan Province Constitution(HPC)implemented for inadequate five years was a exclusive formal provincial constitution to be implemented effectively.As an attempt of separation of powers between central and local authorities in modern times in China,no matter what it gained and lost,it was a mirror and enlightenment and leaved precious political inheritances to the later.The purpose of this text is to seek how our ancestors strive in the history of HPC for realizing constitutionalism and pursuing everyone's dignity as a person. The difficulty they suffered and the experiences they attained in this event were all the lessons the later should draw from in the process that we would implement and realize constitutionalism.HPC is the first of province constitutions in federation autonomy movement which was unique constitution worked,so it was of epoch-making significance in Chinese constitution-making history.First of all,HPC in which the political desirability and interests of every group of political forces were reflected was the result that they were compromised mutually.Secondly,HPC clearly divided duties and responsibility to the province at first time, which laid solid political basis for local autonomy of province and effectively avoided the confusion that the power was inflexible if it was centralized or was confused if it was released. Thirdly it emphasized people sovereignty where and there,required to demonstrate the value of people vote.It was said to be the most radical democracy politics.Choosing local politics system,it adopted half-president system that was similar to that of France nowadays.It emphasized judicatory independence.Finally HPC firstly provided the quality of men and women on the civil rights which make Chinese women walk up the political arena.It provided people with rights of free speech,free tong,free assemblage without arms except from criminal code,purchasing arms to protect them,asking for government to help and comfort and compensate a bereaved family.On the protection of civil rights,it took some specific and feasible measures such as person-protecting decree,dividing and restricting provincial power of autonomy and so on,which effectively safeguarded the civil rights and avoided civil rights in the constitution to become dead letter.The first trouble Hunan people encountered in the process of forming the constituton was who should formulate it.It is a consensus that constitution is a contract among people and only people have constitutional initiative.However,the methods and ways people drew up the constitutions in the history had their own features.Hunan people developed a new style of their own that took scholars to draw up the constitutional draft and used constitutional examinants elected by every county to examine it and finally decided by vote of the whole people.It not only used scholars' specialty but also made generation of constitution legitimate.In the process of drawing up the constitution,that the population was not fixed and the representatives' quota was difficult to be distributed almost led the constitution to fall through. But Hunan people completely embodied the spirit of compromise in constitutionalism and solved the disputes in the process of drawing up the constitution by mutual understanding and mutual accommodation.Because there was not a constitution becoming effective in the whole country,how to part the power between central and local authority became a knot to drawers of constitution.Finally,Hunan people accepted the method listing the powers of local authority in the provincial constitution and effectually untied the knot.The life of constitution lies in execution,so a better constitution is merely dead letters it it can't be implemented in life.Although there existed a variety of unconstitutional deeds in the execution of HPC,the parliament,the government,the common people and so on basically complied with the constitution.In the other words,the interaction of powers among the parliament,the government,the judicature and the common people were basically in the frame of provincial constitution.The parliament on behalf of people supervised attainably to the government and prevented government from abusing power to some extent.At the same time,people could also take constitution up to initiatively defend own rights and interests and the government could consciously obey the provisions of constitution to some extent.In the era that people generally believed that power was the truth and regime generated from gun, the government of Hunan province headed by Zhao Heng-ti were considered as a model not only at that time but also in modern time in case that they didn't want the arbitrary power but purse the power to be limited by law.It was a valuable thing in the 1920s in China.The appearance of HPC was a miracle but the fate of the miracle didn't last longer in case that it appeared so much untimely in China at that time.Firstly,the traditional thought that the country must be unified in China was deep rooted and existed too much misunderstanding to federalism.People always contacted federation with division,singleness with unity and considered federation as division,singleness as unity or patriotism,and considered the behavior laying down constitution by a province as the one dividing country. This thought finally made HPC abolished.Secondly,people didn't believe in constitution and the military man regarded it as a shabby shoe.It may be said that the generation of HPC is owing to military men but the abolishment of HPC is also due to military men.When military men needed it to attain the legitimacy for their own interests,they then laid down it.When they didn't need it,they thus swept it into rubbish dump.Laws disbelieved were nominal and constitutions disbelieved were then dead letters.In the surrounding that Chinese didn't believe in constitution,how could the constitution of Hunan province exist alone?At last, accumulated declining tendency of China,poverty,war,the intervention that foreigners gave to China for domestic affairs,all affected the development of Chinese constitutionalism. While saving the nation from extinction overwhelmed enlightenment and breaking away from poverty became the primary need of people' lives,the constitution also became adornment. Thus the termination of HPC surprised nobody.The autonomic movement uniting provinces in 1920^this the most valuable political attempt in China on 20^thcentury because it integrated systems of constitutionalism,republic and federalism and provided prescriptions to cure autocratic totalitarianism of China.As the effort that people quested local democracy,the constitution of Hunan province finally didn't succeed,but it opened bright windows realizing constitutionalism and sowed the free seeds.As far as research methods were concerned,historical research method was primarily used in this text and would wish the process to reappear,which draw up and implement the constitution of Hunan province at that time by analyzing historical documents and materials and summarizes the experiences and lessons of it for the later to benefit from.Secondly,as a kind of indemnification of human rights,the constitution undoubtedly is a value quarry at first, but as a kind of positive law,it also a kind of legal norms.Therefore this text also uses value-research and positive research methods.At last,this text also uses comparative research method which will not only make us understand generated cultural details of every kind of law and broaden our legal sights and expand the regional restriction of our legal cognition but also know the advantages and shortcomings of every legal system by comparing different legal systems.Individual restriction of cognition to the world and the likeness of human nature make us necessary and capable to benefit from and make use of others' outstanding cultural achievements.