The Research On The Thought Of The Separation Of The Power And Function By Sun Yat-sen

As a great revolutionary forerunner, Sun Yat-sen’s Constitutional theory and revolutionary practice have a profound and long-lasting impact on the process of democratization in Modern China. Among the constitutional theory of Sun Yat-sen, the principle of democracy plays a decisive role and in the the democracy thought, the most groundbreaking one is the "Separation of the Power and Function".In order to change the people’s disaffection about the government in the western political practice, Sun Yat-sen created this doctrine based on his experience and theoretical knowledge and highlighted the necessity and possibility of this theory through a series of historical comparison. The "Separation of the Power and Function" is not only based on the traditional political practice, but also absorb modern Western constitutional ideas. It’s both a succession and an innovation, where the theory of “people have the power” expend the content and the object of the Democracy. The people have the rights to govern the officials and the law and it achieves "people’s sovereignty" formally. In the aspect of “the government has the function”, the governmental power is divided into five parts and each performs its own function, making a total of omnipotent government. The thought of “Control the Function with the Power” reflect the modern constitutional idea of the Sun Yat-sen to build a limited government and make the people oversee the government.In addition, Sun Yat-sen’s "Separation of the Power and Function" has his own approach, which named revolutionary procedure theory. This theory is based on the concept of the distinction of the people by their intelligence and hope to educate these people to enhance awareness of democratic rights and the ability of the people in politics through self-governance in county so that they are truly be able to manage the government and achieve "Separation of the Power and Function". On the other hand, it is also because the people are divided into three classes, people are lack of ability to manage the country, the Political Tutelage Period is more dependent on specialists’ governance, this technocratic concept is also consistent with the trend of the social division in modern times.However, since the background and status of the class of Sun Yat-sen, there are inevitably many defects in the theory and the most obvious ones are the thought of meritocracy, centralization in the seperation of the government power and the essential difference between classes. But it must be admitted that, as a great Theoretical attemp, Sun Yat-sen’ idea offers subsequent democracy-building some new possibilities.