| Under the pressure of the west, the Qing government had learnt the modern state system from the west in order to change its political system and structure since the late Qing dynasty. However, it caused a result of a long-standing abuse of political, producing redundant personnel and fee. These problems became more serious when it came to the republic of China, and the size of the government expanded to be bloated. Therefore,"Jianzheng" was widely appealed at that time. In September 1913, the Xiong Xiling cabinet who was called "First-class talent cabinet" set up, and they had an ambition to refresh the political. Just at that moment, the government encountered serious financial difficulties which needed to be settled immediately, so the cabinet put forward two means called the fundamental solution and the temporary solution. The fundamental solution was reorgnizing the financial, cleaning up the tax and reforming the national Treasury; the temporary solution was "Jianzheng". But the fundamental solution couldnot solve the financial difficulties in a short time, then "Jianzheng"would be the most effective way. As a result, "Jianzheng" became the main policy in Xiong Xiling cabinet.When "Jianzheng" was proposed, there were different repercussions. There was no doubt that it won a large number of supporters, including the public opinion, the chieves of the provinces, the mainstream media, and even Yuan Shikai. But it was also against by some junior staff who were worried to be fired. In addition to this, some dispassionate people gave some suggestions for how to deal well with the "Jianzheng".The main scope of "Jianzheng" included the power system and the military system, with the purpose of removing unnecessary complexity and bureaucracy, and cutting cost. About the power system, the presidential palace, Industry Branch and Judiciary did a good job in the cutting, but many provinces were perfunctory except Hubei, Guangdong and Fujian provinces which had scored certain achievemwnts. As to the military system, the military expenditure had become the main financial expenditure since the revolution, so disarmamenting and cutting back military expanduture were also the important parts of "Jianzheng".Throughout "Jianzheng" in Xiong Xiling cabinet, it was just a temporary solution to solve the financial problem, but finally unexpected turned out to be the main means. During Xiong Xiling cabinet, the effect of "Jianzheng" was limited, the funds that saved was totally not enough for the financial difficulties. "Jianzheng"was because of financial problem which was born of system maladies, it would not be succeed until the maladies were root out. "Jianzheng" was a huge project that involved the interests of most of the departments, so it needed to be well-planned and proceeded step by step. However, in the early republican period, the pressing situation did not allow it to do so, and made it congenitally deficient and postnatal maladjusted, and resulted in outbreaking of the contradictions in a short time, leading "Jianzheng"to be perfunctory. |
