Between. Radical And Conservative - The Late Qing Dynasty Constitutional Thought

The transition of the society and politics of the ancient traditional society of China at the effect of the external force of the Opium War and the internal power of herself, her Social Transformation began to happen obviously after 1840. A series of events, for example, the Movement of Yang Wu, the War between Japan and China of 1894, the Reform Movement of 1898, the Late Qing Dynasty New Deal, the Revolution of 1911, etc. all no doubt accelerated this process of transformation. An important characteristic performance and an important content of the Social Transformation was the emergence and development of the constitutional thought of democracy, moreover, the continuous development of the constitutional thought has been turned into an important factor that promoted the social and political changes of the Late Qing Dynasty to modern time. The progressive intellectuals of Late Qing participated actively in the reform of the socio-political transformation, and they became the lead of the thought, and the immense impetus was also given to the development of the Constitutionalism Movement. One obvious trend of the development of the Constitutional Thought of Democracy of Late Qing Dynasty was from conservative to radical by degrees, however, when it tended to be radicalism, the thinking public took a moderate tactic to maintain its development as far as possible. Why? because of the groups of the advanced modern intellectuals had ever been educated well by the traditional culture of China, and they tried to find a certain joint and link between the traditional civilization of China and European democratic politics, so that they could transplant and graft the Western Constitutional Democracy better. Because of various factors, the advanced modern intellectuals disagreed on the problem how to reform the society and politics of Qing Dynasty,and gradually differentiated into two major factions--the constitutional reformists andrevolutionaries. Although they had different concepts on the reform, they all wanted to achieve the same purpose—bourgeois democratic constitutionalism, that was called "the sides of the same coin" . Constitutionalism Faction, Revolution Groups and the Qing Dynasty, three political forces each put forward their own constitutional design, however, due to the struggle of the three forces interacted together, the development of the constitutional thought of democracy of Late Qing Dynasty also fluctuated between radical and conservative. The advanced intellectuals groups had been made tremendous contributions undoubtedly in the process of progress of Constitutionalism Movement of Late Qing, although their opinions about democracy and constitutionalism were different, the proposition of most of them was that Chinese traditional culture should be combined with democratic constitutional government, only in this way, we will establish the democratic constitutional system with our own national characteristics, and its vitality will be vigorous. So, their constitutional thought also reflected the variation and innovation. The explorations are of great significance undoubtedly now for our construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics constitutional democracy.