The Study Of Gao Yihan's Constitutionalism

Reality is from history, which is the logical starting point for us to study constitutionalism in China. The history of constitutionalism in China has been a century, full of countless intellectuals'painstaking efforts. Even twists and turns didn't decrease Chinese's enthusiasm for it. Gao Yihan who lived in the period of the Republic of China was one of constitutional scholars. He was the backbone of the May 4th Movement, but didn't give the world a clear impression, because he was not only an initiator and constitutional scholar, but also a politician.This paper discusses constitutional ideas, to construct an intellectual image that did his utmost to pursue western liberalistic constitutionalism. Gao Yihan received traditional elementary education at the beginning, and he turned to western learning in the midway. Then he advocated liberal constitutionalism and called for representative system and federal system through publications such as New Youth, The Endeavor, The Weekly Review, Les temps modernes and The Eastern Miscellany.Between an ideal and social reality, he gradually changed his ideas from Anglo-American style two-party system to the acceptance of "one-party is overwhelmingly dominant" on the aspect of political party concept; in economic thought, he preferred mild socialist route, liberalism with Chinese characteristics, which showed his optimism and compromising nature. He opposed to traditions, but couldn't get away from it. As a typical liberal who are compromising, he tried to make a compromise between traditional Chinese practical thoughts and western liberal constitutionalism thought.As for research methods, this paper takes the constitutional scholar Gao Yihan as the center, studying his articles, publications and books in time sequence. Yan Fu, Liang Qichao, Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, Li Dazhao and Zhang Dongsun are mentioned as references. This paper is to restore this liberal constitutionalism scholar's historical image and discuss his thinking features, evolution, origin and value.This paper is divided into five chapters besides preface. Chapter One is GaoYihan's life experiences in different stages; Chapter Two is GaoYihan's liberal thought that covers concepts of liberty, the relationship between nations and individuals, the relationship between civil rights and liberty, the relationship between autonomy and liberty, the concept and value of free speech and the status of economic freedom in constitution; Chapter Three is GaoYihan's thinking about the present situations of constitutionalism, mainly including the thought and evolution of representative System, changes from two-party system to one-party system, federal founding ideology and structure and value of supervisory system; Chapter Four is the origin of GaoYihan's constitutionalism thought, and influences of western liberalism and socialism to GaoYihan's thought are mainly discussed; in Chapter Five, The conclusion is mainly analyzed.