Study On The Conference Of The Covenant

The late period of Qing Dynasty and early one of Republican China, in which various political factions held different views on nation-building, started the transition stage of Modern China. The Democratic Republic was founded After the victory of the Revolution of1911.However, in terms of national political institution-building, deferent parties held distinct claims:Sun Yat-sen, who was the representative of the bourgeois revolutionaries, expected to establish a legislative and executive power to limit Northern faction headed by Yuan Shikai. Instead, the Northern faction wanted to establish a presidential system through which executive power would be uncontained. Ultimately, two political forces manipulated different legislative bodies, thus producing different laws. Nanjing Provisional Senate, which was dominated by the revolutionaries, formulated the Provisional Constitution to limit presidential powers. With the foundation of The Congress, the establishment of a formal constitution became the main task of Congress. During the Congress constitutional process, although the spirit of "Provisional Constitution" had been changed on the principle of legislative power to limit executive power, the final outlined draft constitution to a large extent followed such spirit. In such circumstances, Northern faction who held absolute power to dissolve the second revolution, leading Congress to be unable to meet and eventually dissolve the parliament, resulting in draft constitution stillborn. The fundamental reason for such situation is that Tiantan Draft constitution passed by Congress had not been able to absorb the views of Yuan Shikai, i.e. the legislation still mentally iconic "Provisional Constitution"----the executive power to legislative restrictions. Thus, Yuan established legislative convention in1914to seek a legal basis for his centralization of power. The Republic of China Constitution and a series of bills were legislated after the foundation of Conference on the Law, and the spirit of these legislative bills was intended to expand presidential entirely in favor of the executive power. Compared with the first two bills, the main features of the political system was to establish the central authoritarian power of the president. What is mainly discussed in this paper is the background under which such political situation came out in the early Republican China. Why there this early Republican political situation is discussed in this paper object. Through research into Conference on the Law in the early Republican, and analysis of three major legislative activities (including personnel and legal texts constituting the three major legislative activities), this paper compares the three main legislative campaigns, coming to the conclusion that the control of legislative body by various political forces had led to the birth of contrary constitutions in the early Republican China.