The Controversies Over The Provincial System Reform In 1912

In 1912, the Beijing Government enacted three drafts of provincial system reform and the provincial bureaucracy, which marked the beginning of provincial system reform in Modern China. This was also the first time that the western local system theory had been used for the provincial system reform, which gave rise to widespread controversy among people of the time. The debate centered on the foundation and institution of provinces and the relationship between center and local areas. In terms of the foundation and institution of provinces, the focuses of controversy were: whether provinces and regions should be abolished, the issues of division or cooperation in military-civilian governance, the way of selecting the governor of a province, and the issue of whether government executive could parallel to the autonomy administrative. In terms of the relationship between center and local areas, the focuses of controversy were: the issue of state structure, the issue of adopting centralized or decentralized system, whether the President should have the power to dissolve the provincial assembly, and the issue of the division between national tax and local tax. As is stated above, we can see that the debate refers to all aspects of the provincial system reform, which is a larger debate on the local system in Chinese modern thinking history. The debate has liberated people's political ideology, and raised people's political awareness. It also has a positive significance for the Chinese Modern Ideology and it can be used as a source of reference to the current provincial system reform.