On The Constitutionalism Movement During The War Against Japanese Aggression

Constitutionalism refers to a state of fulfillment of rules and regulations of the constitution in real life. It is designed chiefly to regulate the government and maintain human rights, the two sides of a coin. These were also the aim of the movement of constitutional politics during the war of resistance against Japanese aggression. As far as this paper is concerned, this movement involves three political powers in China who differed on the issue of fighting against Japan and the issue of democracy. The various parties and democratic forces at all levels called for the abolition of the one-party dictatorship of KMT and implementation of constitutional politics. The KMT, however, insisted on its totalitarian rule under the pretext of the Anti-Japan War. Both the totalitarian system and the democratic and constitutional movement in the society were unprecedented. Yet for the sake of the general situation of China, both sides stopped short of total split. Thus no key breakthroughs were achieved in this campaign. Nevertheless, the cruel anti-Japan war made the Communist Party of China adopt new policies. On the one side, it tried hard to demand political democracy from the KMT, and such democracy was of course one of the western style. On the other side, it came up with the new democracy theory, and began to implement, within its area of administration, the new democratic constitutionalism under the leadership of the proletariat, democratic election, the "trinity" regime, human rights maintenance, clean performance and the democratic work-style of serving the people by public servants at all levels. The construction of democracy in the anti-Japan base areas by the CPC complied with the calls of the whole nation for democratic politics. Therefore, the gains and losses of both KMT and CPC during the wartime on the question of democracy and constitutionalism are sure to be inspiring for the future courses of China' s development and provide precious lessons for its continuous construction of democratic politics.