The Cultural Content Of Power Resetting

Mr. Sun Yat-sen hoped that his"Five-Power Constitution"could not only absorb the succinctness of western constitution culture but also melt the useful ingredient of Chinese traditional culture, thus, it could enable China to form"the completely exquisite constitution which surpasses Europe and America and make China to be an East-Meets-West country."Sun Yat-sen believed this"East-Meets-West"Five-Power Constitution could melt the succinctness of western culture and into Chinese culture, meanwhile, it could make up the flaw of the parliamentary system in European and American constitutions.But the Problem is, Mr. Sun Yat-sen saw the compatibility between the cultures and neglected the side of mutually conflicts existing in different types of cultures. The heterogeneous cultures has difference existence domain originally, however, Chinese people were compelled to study the western constitution since the Opium War in order to save the nation from extinction and struggle for survival. From then on, there was incisive conflict between Chinese and western culture in the domain of Chinese constitution, and the conflict result was that the divided power structure was reset by the centralized structure of Chinese traditional culture. Such as the five-power constitution, Mr.Sun Yat-Sen had designed a"multi-purpose government"with the important characteristic of administrative centralization in his five-power constitution. In order to change the condition that the Chinese nation had lagged behind and was vulnerable to attack, promote the political status of Chinese nation in the world nationality forest, Sun Yat-Sen hoped to build a powerfully"multi-purpose government"through the five-power constitution to conform all kinds of political resources efficiently, thus impel rapidly the Chinese nation to move towards powerfully. Whereas, unfortunately, the"multi-purpose government"design emphasized with administrative centralization was used and tampered by Jiang Jie-shi, and turned to be a pure tool of advancing centralization.The paper considers and studies the problem of power resetting from the perspective of the different values system and the thinking pattern in the East and West culture. The paper divides into five chapters altogether. Chapter One has analyzed the cultural base of constitutionalism in the East and West. Patriarchal ethics is the foundation of traditional culture. Under the guidance of"Filial Piety and Respect and Love"ideal, China implemented the power distribution way of"all the powers belongs to one authority". The patriarchal relations had conformed all the traditional culture, and its thinking pattern was to pursue the mix of subject and object in a body, in other words, that is"harmony between man and nature". On the level of value understanding, patriarchal relations had also conformed the traditional culture, concretely speaking, it includes: the order, holism, good human nature and other ideas. Among those, the order is the highest legal value. While the cultural foundation of western constitutionalism is the rationalism based on the separation of subject from object.The Second Chapter analyses the influence of thinking pattern, which base is the subject and nature is only object with the characteristics of"harmony between man and nature"and"intuitive extrapolation". The traditional thinking pattern of"harmony between man and nature"would certainly result in the political philosophy of"sages and kings in one". This political philosophy made the Chinese highest power setting maintain centralization all the time during thousands years of feudal rule. The traditional thinking pattern of"harmony between man and nature"even influenced Sun Yat-Sen's constitutional thought greatly. In the design of five-power constitutional system, Mr. Sun emphasized the"state power"should exercise by the prescient people. This kind of thought was the embodiment of the traditional thinking pattern of sophist politics ideal based on"harmony between man and nature"in modern history of constitutionalism.The third chapter changed the angle of view to the values, another important connotation of cultures. In this chapter, it analyses several important values in Chinese traditional culture, the influence of the order, good human nature and holism to the five-power constitution. The traditional patriarchal order maintained the judgments of despotic value. The values of patriarchal order affected the drawing up and implement of modern Chinese constitution, and it had reset the state power of the imported constitution. Next is the value of traditional Chinese holism principle. The creation of western constitution has a close correlation with the values of individual principle. The individual principle emphasized the citizen individual may depend on its self-way to do his own business and not need to receive other people's interference. On the contrary, the holism value emphasis the central status of community, especially on the national interest. The holism value, which based on patriarchal relations guided traditional China's authority to move towards centralization, and produced the controlling function no the five-power constitution. Finally, it analyses the influence of value of good human nature on the power resetting in the five-power constitution. According to the values of good human nature, because human nature is good, then the state power executors wouldn't to enlist individual profit by using the power in their hand. Therefore, it's unnecessary to suspect them to grasped power. Just as the traditional value system, which causes Sun Yat-Sen to emphasize that must establish a powerful"the multi-purpose government"when he designed the power structure in the five-power constitution.The fourth chapter analyses how the five-power constitution set the state power of the western constitutions specifically. In this chapter, there are four levels to analyze this problem altogether. First, it has analyzed the power resetting of five-power constitution from the angle of value idea. From the beginning of the Organizational Outline of the Provisional Government and the Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China, the constitution had already been a powerful tool to maintain centralization. The presidential system in the Organizational Outline of the Provisional Government transferred to the centralized cabinet system in the Provisional Constitution, which has fully reflected the ideal that the revolutionary party members regarded the constitution as the tool and pursued the ideal of centralization. This ideal has held an extremely bad precedent in modern China's history of constitutionalism, since then, it caused the Beiyang warlords to imitate and made the constitution nominally. Next, from the design of power structure, the paper analyses the problem of power resetting. Just because of the ideal of centralization, The Kuomintang Party designed the centralized power structure based on"the party beyond the state"and"Allocution Politics by the Party"during the period of stratocracy and Allocution Politics. There's no exception even if in the period of constitutionalism. In order to push centralization, the stubborn influence of Kuomintang Party even used some procedure barrier, such as"the government reorganization"and"the implement of constitution", to maintain centralization. And the operation of this centralized design would certainly influence the citizen's freedom. What's more, this design was also responded in the system. For example, the"Allocution Politics constitution"emphasized that all the state powers must belong to the Kuomintang to grasp, which violated with the constitutional spirit of people's sovereignty.The fifth chapter tells us not to neglect the power resetting in the culture research and should be more reasonable to treat distinct cultures of China and the west through the penetration of the power resetting in the modern Chinese constitutional movement. We should absorb the succinct part fully in the western culture, which can be advantageous to the Chinese constitutional construction, suspend the factors which hinders China's constitutional construction in the traditional culture and realize the traditional culture's rationalization reforming positively. Because the traditional culture emphasizes power supreme and the pattern of power's top to down transmission, in this kind of pattern, citizens'rights and freedom were neglected. Therefore, China's constitutional construction should initiate"returning power to the people"more vigorously and treasure citizens'rights and freedom, consequently, which will make the ideal of"all the power belongs to the people"root in the hearts of the people deeply.