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The Ways For The People To Charge The Officials And The Disposition Of The Cases During The Republic Of China In Sichuan Province (1935-1949)

Posted on:2008-10-09Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:X T HuangFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360242458646Subject:Special History
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The study on the issue of public prosecutor during the Republic of China is not rich so far, and most is focus on the discuss of administrative litigation, which could not show the actual situation. Taking the example of Sichuan Province in the 1930s and 1940s, the thesis emphasizes studying the approach of the public prosecutor and the disposition of the cases for revealing the quiddity of the public prosecutor system and displaying the social and political practice during the Republic of China.In ancient China, the monarchy regime viewed public prosecutors as an auxiliary way of limiting any wrongful action by government officials instead of as a policy or a measure to ensure and safeguard the public rights and interests. As a result, public prosecutors were likely to pay high price for the charges. Up till the modern times, especially during the Republic of China (1912-1949) the system "the people charging the officials " was also updated from the transformation of China's traditional and political system to its thorough innovation. The foundation of the Republic of China marked the ending of despotic monarchy and the building of democratic republic system. With the transformation of the fundamental political system, the system "the people charging the officials" was also completely changed. This system with the cover of despotic monarchy was a tool of safeguarding the monarchy's benefits and its pattern was single and vague. While during the Republic of China the system was characterized by safeguarding public benefits as its aim and its pattern became open and various. In this case, the new pattern "the people charging the officials " during the Republic of China reflected the nature of democratic system.However, due to the constant turbulence of political situations as well as the society, it was hard for the governments of all previous years to take up effective measures to perform the enacted laws or policies and the implementation of each law and regulation was challenged by many unexpected factors. After the establishment of Nationalist Government in Nanjing, the construction of the government came to its relatively stable stage. However, the overall outbreak of War of Resistance against Japan changed the process absolutely: one was that the area that the Nationalist Government's political construction affected was decreasing, such as Sichuan was a focus by the Nationalist Government; the other was military & executive affairs became the primary political agenda to the Nationalist Government. After the political system of Sichuan Province came to its unity in 1935, Sichuan was gradually developing as a relatively stable province, which better reflected the operation conditions of all political projects in 1930s & 1940s.The cases of "the people charging the officials " in Sichuan sprang up with unity of Sichuan's political situation, which was a reflection from ending the turbulence of defense area in Sichuan's political field to the standardizing its political system, as well as a centralized reflection of growing disputes between the government and the public. The aggravation of the conflict was related to the construction of basic-level politics as well as to the wartime environment. After the establishment of the Nationalist Government, the government enforced its control of the basic social layer in order to positively advance the political construction on the county level and tried to draw officials closer and more direct to the public. At the time, Sichuan took the counties' politics as the main task of political construction. However, under the environment of the turbulence of political situation and continuous battles above all, the construction of the basic-level regime with the logo "democracy and autonomy" headed for "the government in charge", that is, the government directly controlled everything, with the aim of controlling all kinds of social resources to realize the goal of strengthening the construction of basic-level politics. As for the basic-level officials, their primary tasks were to recruit the soldiers, to assemble grains and summon work force from the public. On the other side these political actions became the important origin of aggravated government-public relations, which reflected most obvious during the anti-Japanese period. With the overall outbreak of War of Resistance against Japan, Sichuan ranked the most important resistance rear and had to shoulder the most grains and to sustain soldiers' sources for the war. In order to recruit enough work forces, to raise finance, and gather materials, the Nationalist Government had to depend on the basic-level officials such as county magistrates, which unavoidably arose the conflict between the public and the officials. The widespread protest from the public was its striking demonstration.In order to alleviate the conflicts between the public and the officials as well as to supervise the officials, the Nationalist Government took the supportive policies and formed the multi-layer system to control the officials in the systematic pattern. As for the officials who violated the public rights and broke the law, the citizens could submit their complaints to various government departments such as executive courthouses, common courthouses, supervision departments, executive and military units. The based laws for the complaints were law of administrative procedure, law of disciplinary complaint, law of civil procedure, law of criminal prosecution, in which "the Submit Scheme of Public's Accusation of Officials" was widely used. The Nationalist Government formulated a series of complaint-supportive policies concerning some worse or more serious cases which committed crimes and violated public benefits, and especially supported the public's accusation of corrupt officials enthusiastically. In order to support the public's complaints, the Nationalist Government also presented some measures to protect the public benefits. With the further development of various regime organizations & departments, the system "the people charging the officials " would be accordingly improved and the terms that the public protested against the officials would be also mature.Under the encouragement of the Nationalist Government during the years from 1935 to 1949, Sichuan witnessed an increasing number of cases of public prosecutors. In term of case number and type, among the charged cases officials' corruption and unfair wealth accumulation came for the most, followed by punishment abuse for the offense, then the violation of grain policies and of the drugging prohibition, along with the intimate links with gangs,etc. The growing cases of public prosecutors in number and variety not only mirrored the focus of the contradictionthe between the officials and the public but also revealed that the grass-roots officials were facing difficulties. The corruption and the violentb wrongful action of administrative officials were the immediate causes to arouse the tension between the officials and the public. The low pay and hard tasks were attributed to the major cause of most Bureaucrats' legal Violation. many Bureaucrat were not elected by the public and even some grass-roots administrative officials were inhumane, treacherous and cunning.Undoubtedly they exacerbated the illegal situation. From the complainant, most of them were the rich and powerful elite,while ordinary people found it difficult to charge officials because they not only paid for the expensive charge but also risked themselves being revenged by officials. What's more, the public prosecutors only could accuse of the officials, but had no way to know how the case was dealt with and had no right to accuse of the official further in case an unfavorable adjudication occured. From the accused, many of them always affected the government's authority to interfere with administrative people to strive to stop the ground from controlling official acts. And the Nationalist government evaluated officials by means of whether they were charged as one basic political accomplishment. Consequently this evaluating measure slipped into a key cause that the officials tried every means to block the public to charge of them. So to a large extent, the government did not build up the system "the people charging the officials " as a measure to safeguard the majority of ordinary people. but still redarded it as a tool for managing officials.As for the cases from the public prosecutors , their admissibility belonged to various courts, such as the Administrative Court, the legislative court, the ordinary courts, supervision departments, executive and military units. But in fact, each department had its own right to dispose of the case. The disposition of the public prosecutor in the course, in relation to judicial and supervisory branches, the administrative and military authorities possessed the more prominent power. So the people always failed to accuse the officials through the judicial branches and supervision departments,but once they turned to the administrative and military authorities through special channel of "the Submit Scheme of Public's Accusation of Officials", relatively they were likely to succeed in accusing officials. This is because the executive power and the military power grew powerful as a result of the war factors reigned, The other is because the government tried to control the disposal of the public prosecutor to exert its direct control other officials. This situation in turn influenced the tendency of the people to turn to the administrative and military authorities, naturally the other departments received few charges. Along with the development of the Constitutional Movement, this situation changed greatly. The more prominent manifestation was that the status of the judiciary was rising gradually and gained greater access to the public prosecutor cases, which could be fully manifest in the ultimate authority of the judiciary process dealing with the trial of corruption back. However, due to the resistance from officials and the obstruction from the military such a change ran into difficulty.The punishment modes to the Bureaucrats who broke law could be divided into administrative punishment and the legal penalties. The Nationalist Government often exerted impartial punishment to different officials: the more junior an official was, the more punishments he suffered from; while the more senior a bureaucrat was and the less, even Officials got more impunity to the main administrative punishment seldom received the legal penalties. Moreover, the executive branches sheltered the criminals overtly from time to time. Therefore government officials dealing with the illegal disposal of the Bureaucrats' crimes were prone to obvious partiality and light longitudinal acts. The reason was mainly due to the low-paying task , many administrative officials of the grassroots even didn't want to hold the humble positions, resulting in "Sharing not for the no-good person." In order to maintain the officials' enthusiasm to sustain soldiers and grain and to collect other social resources for the war,the Nationalist government had to give in to the criminal officials and carried on the acts of forgiveness policy. Meanwhile, the nationalist government did not want to lose the support of the people, took the generosity of both the normal complaints and the trumped-up charge of the control measures. Clearly, the government couldn't keep a balanced approach between the public prosecutor and the officials. However, from an overall view in this case, the ordinary people failed to be treated fairly and their due rights hadn't been protected. One of the most typical examples was that the public people couldn't get any compensation for their losses from illegal officials.On the issue of the public prosecutor, the Nationalist Government was far from the normal form of the public prosecutor mechanism but was imbued with a political balance of power strategy. The public prosecutor had not become a means to protect their own interests. It has been alienated by the Nationalist Government into administration tools and or into a buffer to relieve the tension between the government and the people. The Nationalist government pretended to support the public prosecutor is nothing but a means of political control with the purpose of straightening out the bureaucracy,of buying popular support and of reliving the contradictions between the officials and the ordinary people. Its fundamental purpose was not to protect people's rights or the rights of government officials, but in order to make the crisis-riddled regime maintained. However, in the 1930s and 1940s, from the general public to officials of the nationalist government, both aroused disappointment and dissatisfaction at the government in addition to the growing trend of corruption which indicated both the failure of the unfair balance strategy of the Nationalist Government and the thorough collapse of the system "the people charging the officials "This thesis tries to focus on the issue of the public prosecutor through the 1930s and 1940s in Sichuan Province to explore how the practice of the political system was applied to the grass-rooted social reality during the Republic of China.
Keywords/Search Tags:the Republic of China, Sichuan province, public prosecutor, the basic-level regime, political balance
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