Constitutional Reform In The Late Qing Dynasty From The Perspective Of Empire To Modern State Transformation

In the early context of modern times,"constitution" is related to state building and represents the core "political structure" of a state.Constitutional reform at the end of Qing Dynasty is the historical node of the transition from the imperial state to the modern state.Most of the domestic researches on the constitutional reform at the end of Qing Dynasty follow the concept of "constitutional law",take "limitation of power" and "protection of rights" as the core dogma to measure and evaluate the constitutional reform at the end of Qing Dynasty,and ignore the connotation of "state building" of the constitutional reform at the end of Qing Dynasty.The state is a common phenomenon in all kinds of civilized communities.The modern state characterized by "Modernity" takes "nation-state" as its core.Nation state exists in the union composed of nation state.It is a series of system patterns of rule.It implements administrative monopoly on the territory with defined boundary(boundary).Its rule is maintained by law and direct control of external violence tools.However,nation-state is only the result of the overwhelming advantage of modern western countries in the global competition,not the reason.It is not the only state form in the early modern world.From a global perspective,at the same time that the modern state system was formed in Europe,the Manchu military aristocrats who rose in the Northeast established the Qing Empire,a universal empire different from the nation-state Empire,in the east of Asia.For quite a long time,the Qing Empire,with its elastic constitutional structure,and the powerful countries emerging in the modern history of the world,kept the pattern of two peaks in the East and the West.Since the middle of the 19 th century,the nation-state has swept the world with its huge advantages.Under the domestic and foreign difficulties,the empire is facing the Constitutional Transformation to the nation-state.At the end of the Qing Dynasty,the constitution was an important node of the transformation from Empire to nation-state.The rise of Western nation-state has experienced a long historical evolution,in which the stage of absolutism has a far-reaching impact on the formation of modern state.In the constitutional system,the ultimate nation-state presents a two-way structure of "nation" and "state".At the level of "nation",it shows the integration of people’s sovereignty and nationalism.The goal of this paper is to interpret the internal logic of the constitutional reform in the late Qing Dynasty from the perspective of "empire to modern state",and focus on the important influence of the Empire construction in the early Qing Dynasty on the constitutional reform in the late Qing Dynasty,so as to provide a whole narrative framework for the community of civilization continuity.There are four chapters in the content,the first chapter describes the Empire construction in the early Qing Dynasty generally;the second chapter interprets the constitutional reform in the late Qing Dynasty from the perspective of democratic state construction;the third chapter interprets the constitutional reform in the late Qing Dynasty from the perspective of national state;the fourth chapter interprets the constitutional reform in the late Qing Dynasty from the perspective of centralized state.The second and third chapters mainly deal with the integration construction of modern state "community",and the fourth chapter mainly deals with the construction of modern state,which is described as follows.There are two arguments about the nature of Qing Empire: early modern colonial empire and late empire.By combing the evolution of the concept of "empire" in the west,it is found that the essence of the debate is the legitimacy of the constitutional structure of the Qing Empire.The Qing Empire was established as an empire by the ethnic minorities from neiya to the Central Plains.In the early Qing Dynasty,in the process of Empire construction,the constitutional structure not only absorbed the "Khanate" of the Neapolitan grassland ethnic group,but also inherited the legitimacy of the traditional Central Plains Dynasty,thus integrating the inner and outer truth of the Great Wall.Through the identification of consanguinity,culture,religion and so on,the Qing Empire firmly integrated a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country,and the imperial power of the Qing Empire had multiple legitimacy.There is a set of corresponding system and its corresponding region and population behind each overlapping law,and the imperial constitutional system presents the characteristics of multiple and complex.The modern state is a sovereign state,relying on the people’s sovereignty as its legitimacy,and the sovereign will is condensed by the people’s will.The abstract will of the people is expressed by means of the formal mechanism and represents the people to exercise sovereignty.Under the background of the change of political legitimacy in ancient and modern times,the input of Western-style civil rights concept,the promotion of civil rights,and the founding of the country will become the consensus of people with insight in the court and the field.At the end of the Qing Dynasty,the Qing Empire tried to rebuild the state authority through gradual reform and transition to constitutional monarchy.The principle of people’s sovereignty is partly embodied in the copy constitution,and the establishment of the capital Council and the local council is aimed at absorbing the people’s will.But in a heterogeneous society,it is always faced with the problem of who is the people.On the one hand,in the vast area of neiya and the middle and lower level of the Han and remote areas,the traditional authority represented by the imperial power still constitutes the bond to maintain the country.On the other hand,the awareness of civil rights is rising,and petition activities are on the rise.A simple understanding of democracy as parliament is not enough to absorb the unbalanced will of the people.As an imaginary community,the modern state is a country with the nation as its community,and it condenses the ethnic identity with the national identity.In the process of Empire construction in the early Qing Dynasty,the ethnic,cultural and traditional Han areas were effectively incorporated into the unified national identity through the policy of political and cultural diversity.As a national policy,"first worship of Manchuria" has become the key to maintain Manchu characteristics and control the Han by minority groups.The goal of the constitutional reform is to establish a modern state,eliminate Manchu and Han areas,realize ethnic equality and build a cross-ethnic nation.The concept of "Great Harmony of five ethnic groups" and the constitutional activities in the border areas in the late Qing Dynasty all contain the path of "nationalism" community construction.However,this goal was under two pressures.On the one hand,the thought of "worshiping Manchuria first" as the foundation of the country was deeply rooted.Out of the prevention of the Han people,the farce similar to the "Royal cabinet" was finally made.On the other hand,the revolutionaries propagated ethnicity,incited ethnic revolution and established a single Han.Finally,it led to internal division and the constitutionalists turned to revolution.The modern state is a totalitarian state.In the imagination of the "other" of the eastern autocracy,China is regarded as a typical example of autocracy.In fact,the so-called autocracy of the empire is different from the centralization ability of modern countries.The multiple and complex structure of the constitutional system of the Qing Empire led to the deficiency of the ability of resource grabbing and political mobilization,which was also an important reason why the Qing Empire was in a low position in the competition with modern countries.One of the important tasks of constitutionalism in the late Qing Dynasty is to strengthen the centralization of power and build a modern country with high-strength national capacity.However,this goal conflicts with the power of local governors since the late Qing Dynasty and the autonomy of local governments in the name of constitutionalism.In the case of insufficient national capacity,this political change could not be completed.Since the Republic of China,the state has fallen into a state of fragmentation,which is related to this one-sided understanding of "constitution making" and "autonomy".Through the efforts of the constitutional reform in the late Qing Dynasty,the imperial state and modern China became a community with continuous sovereignty.The collapse of the Qing Dynasty means that the Manchu nobles lost the dominant power of state transformation,but the historical mission of modern state building has continued in the hands of generations of successors.