On The Pilot Operation Of Local Parliamentary System In Late Qing Dynasty

At the beginning of the 20^th century, the government of Qing Dynasty had to initiate a constitutional reform when faced big crises both from domestic and abroad. During the reign of Guangxu, the government undertook a series of reform, including the preparatory work for constitution, the edicts and laws for setting up Provincial Assembly by each local government. As a result, the national election of a western style came into being. In the first year of Xuantong's reign, the system of Provincial Assembly was practiced by nearly all the provinces except for Xinjiang province. Provincial Assembly was thus became a pilot of democracy in modern China.The reason of making research on Provincial Assembly of Jiangsu Province lies in the fact that its political and economic culture was relatively more advanced than the other region. Consequently, the practice of Provincial Assembly of Jiangsu Province was not only the best one in China at that time, but also a typical institution for research. Based on the former study, the dissertation analyzes two important laws, one is"The Statute of Provincial Assembly"and the other is"The Statute of Election for Provincial Assembly". Meanwhile, it also tries to show the process from big hopes to total failure of the practice of Provincial Assembly of Jiangsu Province in order to draw lessons from the unsuccessfulness of local parliament system and to enlighten the contemporary democratic institutions.The dissertation is composed of three parts: the introduction, the text and the conclusion.The part of introduction includes the reason and significance of selecting Provincial Assembly of Jiangsu Province as the object of this research, the former studies on this topic, the researching methods used in this dissertation and its achievements and drawbacks.Chapter one is about the source of assembly system in late Qing Dynasty. In the first section, the author briefly introduces the western parliament system, its history and its nature in order to make comparative study with the Chinese counterpart. The second section describes the spread of the idea of parliament in late Qing Dynasty, the relative discussion and the final experimentation. Based on the former two chapters, the author concludes the characteristic of the spreading process of western parliament system, which lies in that the Chinese one got rid of its western nature, namely the spirit of contract. As a result, the Chinese road to a parliament system which was deeply influenced by local culture greatly deviated from the right way to justice and was destined to failure.Chapter two describes the background of Jiangsu Province. Section one is a brief introduction of the geography, history and other human activities of Jiangsu Province, pointing out its special geographical advantage of being influenced by new ideas. Section two analyzes its industrial and commercial development that contributes a lot to the people's participation of Provincial Assembly. With the development of economy, the businessmen, as a newly-born class, required more political privileges. Section three is about the spread of new ideas in Jiangsu Province. The popularization of education and awakening of elites'rights conscience led to the active preparatory work for a Provincial Assembly. Section four finally construes the local officials'active aid during the process.Chapter three and chapter four concern the preparatory work of Provincial Assembly of Jiangsu Province. The two chapters contain the following issues: the qualification of electorates, the voting mechanism and the councilors. The articles on qualification of electorates in the The Statute of Provincial Assembly were analyzed in detail. Some relative investigative activities were also showed in the dissertation. The Statute of Provincial Assembly also contained the articles on voting systems which constituted the legal basis of election. After reading many articles in the newspaper at that time, the author finds out both critical and praiseful remarks which were analyzed in the text. Then, the election produced the counselors who mainly originated from the elites. This part tries to show that these counselors'ideas were hybrids of tradition and modern times and that situation often led to the submission to great powers and real crises. Finally, the people were both ignorant and depressed during the process.Chapter five analyzes the operation and motions of Provincial Assembly of Jiangsu Province. First section is about the preparation of discussing official issues. Section two analyzes the function and powers of the assembly in the The Statute of Provincial Assembly. Thereafter, some regular and temporal meetings were introduced. From these meetings we can find out that while the enthusiasm of the counselors tended to be slack due to some institutional reasons, but the operational mechanism mature. Section three construes the motions from several aspects and makes conclusion that the local dictatorial government set several limitations by the regulations in the statute on the Provincial Assembly so that it was so weak to supervise the former effectively.Chapter six discusses the relationship between the Provincial Assembly and the local government. Section one is about the spirit of a constitutional system, namely the balance of powers. According to that theory, the relationship between the Provincial Assembly and the local government was in a bad situation at that time. The regulations in the The Statute of Provincial Assembly to some extent determined that these two branches could not cooperate well. Section two make further research on the two institutes and concludes that their fight and quarrel was much more than their cooperation, so that they couldn't operate in a harmonized environment. The reason for such a result was that in one hand the councilors could not understand the nature of parliament, especially the coordination values and in the other the corruption was in vogue at that time which eroded the brand new system. Section three tells about other important elements which influenced the relationship between the two organs.The last part is the inspiration from the local parliamentary system in late Qing Dynasty. The dissertation finally analyzes the nature of provincial assembly, evaluates its historical function objectively, and concludes the causation of its failure. In the end, it points out that although it's an unsuccessful experiment, the Provincial Assembly of Jiangsu Province is a great asset for the modern democratic construction.