Changes Of Yang Du’s Constitutional Thoughts

Modern China has thoroughly, on the way to being rich and powerful, undergone the exploratory process from machine production to technology improvement then to institution reform. During the process of institution reform, scholars of constitutionalism have eagerly dedicated their knowledge to the country. As a political scholar educated at home and abroad, Yang Du has come up with various constitutional assertions in different periods. This kind of frequent changes is not only a common phenomenon during the era, but also reveals a special case due to individual experiences and fate. The research on Yang Du’s changes of constitutional thoughts is both to understand reasons of his ideology formation and transformation, and to pry into the approach of modern Chinese constitutional development. Based on Yang Du’s experiences, the thesis divides his constitutional thoughts into three parts. It explains four factors that lead to Yang Du’s variable constitutional thoughts:the education, the times, general rules for reforms and late Chinese society. From my point of view, Yang Du’s variable constitutional thoughts and various comments received are not only due to his contradiction and hesitation in personal thoughts, but also affected by the hardship in developing constitutionalism. Just like a visitant, Yang Du has to look for kinds of political backers to make himself known. His tragedy is similar to other constitutional scholars’grief and has much to do with the Chinese constitutional development as well.This thesis takes two main methods, including document analysis and individual analysis, to explain Yang Du’s constitutional ideology and his transformation. It obeys the historical sequence to discuss Yang Du’s thoughts and his changes:from the art of assisting monarchy to constitutional monarchy, then to ideology of democratic republic and communism. It concludes reasons of Yang Du’s change in constitutional ideology with four factors:education at home and abroad, situation at home and abroad, regular pattern of ancient and modern reform, hardship of Chinese constitutional construction. It ends with the viewpoint that reasons of Yang Du’s constitutional transformation have much to do with individual fate, times background and peculiar approach of Chinese constitutional construction. Through description about Yang Du’s experiences and thoughts, the thesis expects to analyze reasons of his changes and to touch some key points on Chinese constitutional path, so as to provide a few suggestions.