The Emergence of Constitutional Thoughts and the Reform Movement

Abstract

In the middle and later periods of the nineteenth century, China suffered from an increasingly serious national crisis caused by constant aggressions from Western powers. Under this historical context, it became the goal of the lofty-minded Chinese people to fight for the prosperity of the country by the way of “Jiu Wang Tu Cun” (saving the nation from subjugation and ensuring its survival), which had run through the whole modern Chinese history and had influenced and fostered the development of the modern history of Chinese legal civilization. At that time, some radical bureaucratic “Shi Da Fu” (literati and officials) from “Yang Wu Pai” (the Westernization Group) had begun to focus their attention on the improvement of political system. Represented by Wang Tao, Xue Fucheng, He Qi, Hu Liyuan, Zheng Guanying, and Ma Jianzhong, these people agreed that the parliamentary system which was featured by the joint ruling of both the monarch and the people should be implemented in China by following the practices of the Western countries, which not only showed an expansion of the contents by adopting “Xi Xue” (the Western Studies) and learning from the west, but also reflected the appearance of constitutional thoughts. These people were different from “Yang Wu Pai” (the Westernization Group), so they were called “Gai Liang Pai” (the Early Reformists). It was obvious that the connotation and goal of their constitutional thinking were determined by the special national situation of China, so they were with distinctive Chinese characteristics. So consequently, they not only served as a political enlightenment to the public who lived in a suffocating atmosphere, but also provided an ideological basis for the ensuing reformists.