A Study On Cai-E's Political Thoughts

Cai-E(1882-1916) was a famous militarist and politician in the modern history of our country. He had made imperishable achievements and contribution for the nation's independence, richness and powerflilness during his short lifetime of only 34 years by establishing and protecting the bourgeois democratic republic country, succeeding in rising and leading the Yunnan Revolution of 1911 and anti-Yuan Shikai War, actively exploring the route of saving and rejuvenating the nation through the learning of the western capitalist revolutionary theory. During this process, he absorbed and adopted the distillate of traditional ancient Chinese ideology and the civilization of modern western political results, combining with the practice of neoteric Chinese anti-imperialism and feudalism, forming his characteristic feature of his political thoughts.For 80 years, especially recent 20 years, the world of academy has taken a deep research into Cai-E's thoughts and made a lot of achievements. But it is still necessary and there is also a great vacancy for us to deepen this research. This paper selects Cai-E's political thoughts as its research object in an attempt to help the people deeply understand Cai-E and further the research of him.The author thinks that Cai-E's political thoughts can be divided into five aspects : anti-imperialist and patriotic thoughts, democratic revolutionary thoughts, state sovereignty thoughts, party thoughts and constitutionalism thoughts.After the Opium War, the contradiction between the Chinese people and imperialism became the primary contradiction of modern Chinese society. And it was one of the historical missions for modern China tooppose the aggression of imperialism and strive for the independence and liberation of the nation. Living in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic China, Cai-E paid a close attention to the fortune of the country and nation. His strong patriotic thoughts urged him to devote into theanti-imperialist struggle. He advocated wariorism, boasted military nationality, claimed compulsory military service and declared to strengthen military forces and national defense in resistance of the aggression of imperialist countries.As a pure-hearted patriot, Cai-E gradually realized that the several thousand years of Chinese feudalism and despotism system had been the primary cause of China's stagnancy and backward during his study of the western society and his search for the route of saving the nation. His political tendency consequently turned to oppose Qing dynasty, overthrow the feudalist rule of Qing dynasty, execute capitalist democratic politics, establish bourgeois democratic republic in order to realize his political ideal of powerful country and wealthy people. Based on the upper democratic revolutionary idea, Cai-E led the Yunan Revolution of 1911 and contributed to the construction of national politics and economy. In 1915, Cai-E died a glorious death for rising and leading the war of opposing Yuan Shikai's re-imperialization and for the Reconstruction of the Republic.The state sovereignty is the basic condition of the establishment of a country. Cai-E realized clearly the importance of the state sovereignty during his study of the western society and formed a clear concept of the state sovereignty. Due to the corruption of Qing government and the decline of state sovereignty, Cai-E appealed to the withdrawing of the stateeconomic rights snatched by the imperialist countries. He claimed firmly that sovereignty belonged to the state and state sovereignty laid higherabove human rights, so as to maintain the unification of the country and fasten the country's political and economic construction.Cai-E fully affirmed that party and party politics played an important role in the construction of bourgeois revolution and democratic politics. He also thought that a party should have a definitive political program, pursue the party virtue and stand for the public interests. He also explored the principle of the party political operations. He held on firmly...