Demonstration Of Yang Du's Concept Of Constitutional Monarchy

Yang Du is a very typical political character in modern Chinese history. He experienced crisis at the end of the Qing Dynasty, revolutions at the beginning of the Republic and the New-Democratic Revolution. During the period of changing from feudalism to modern republic, Yang advocates constitutional monarchy, raising some ideas about setting up constitutional monarchy in China. What he did has a great effect to China at that time. Therefore Yang Du is a valuable character for political research. This thesis is mainly about reasons of form, content and characteristics of constitutional monarchy of Yang Du and it also have a deep analysis and discussion on role and effect of his constitutional monarchy in Chinese constitution in Modern Chinese history. The main ideas are:1.Make a research on reasons why Yang Du's constitutional monarchy forms. Its deep reasons are patriotism inspiration, domestic and abroad situation motivation, monarchy study influence and influence of his personal experience and characteristics.2.Clarify detailed content and characteristics of Yang Du's constitutional monarchy idea. The main ideas are setting up consul of ministers, realizing a responsible government for the state and its people;holding parliament which is the only weapon to reform the government. The parliament is formed by people and conduct authority on behalf of people;legislating constitution and promoting parliament's authority. Yang Du grasps the three signals of constitutional monarchy which are responsible consul, parliament and constitution. Main features of his idea are: attach importance to analysis situation in China;be against force revolution and advocate heroism salvation. In order to understand in depth the characteristics of Yang Du's constitutional monarchy idea, the thesis makes a comparison among Yang's idea, Liang Qichao's enlightened autarchy idea and Song Jiaoren's party cabinet idea.3.Overall evaluate Yang Du's constitutional monarchy idea. Yang's idea drives politics democratization course in Modern China, especially his responsible consul idea which has an initial effect on development of constitutional idea. Under the complicating political situation at that time, his idea could be a practical and feasible mode. Of course its limitation is very obvious. His idea serves for Yuan Sikai's restoration of a dethronedmonarch, which is unacceptable by the history. And he himself doesn't remove totally feudalism, which makes his capitalism idea is very superficial and self-contradict. We should treat this kind of character just and evaluate him based on truth. The thesis tries to impersonally evaluate his contribution and defect.