Zheng Guanying's Legal Ideas

Zheng Guanying is an important person in the history of Chinese modern ideas.As a patriotic merchant, Zheng Guanying mastered Chinese traditional cultures andmodern western knowledge. He advocated bourgeois legal system. The legalidea took up an important part in Zheng Guanying's ideas. He advocatedsetting up Congress, administering constitutional monarchy, applying thepublic international law and reforming the judicial system. These ideaswere all very advanced in the times. However, the scholars don't paymuch attention to Zheng Guanying's legal ideas for a long time. So, Ihope to do some research on his legal ideas. For this reason, the maintext are divided into six parts.In Part 1, it mainly refers to the background and his personal factors that causedZheng Guanying's legal ideas. Zheng Guanying were born in 1842, dying in 1922. Sohis legal ideas were impressed the characteristic of that period. At the same time,Zheng Guanying's personal factors also caused his legal ideas occur.Part 2 mainly analyses the jurisprudence of Zheng Guanying. As oneof the ancient capitalist class reform group, Zheng Guanying abstractedthe western legal concepts which mainly surrounded the center "reform"Then he brought up the "natural rights" and "Tao", "Utensil" and "Study". These constructed the base of his legal reform ideas. Part 3 are mainly about Zheng Guanying's constitutional legal idea.Zheng Guanying hoped that the Qing Government could learn westerncapitalism countries to execute constitutional monarchy. He brought upsetting up Congress, education ideas and nationality legal idea into hisconstitutional legal idea.Part 4 is about Zheng Guanying's legal idea of public internationallaw. Zheng Guanying paid much attention to the important effect thatpublic international law played on protecting rights of Chinese peopleand advantages of Chinese government. So, this part mainly refers to theprinciples of public international law, the consul and diplomaticrelations and the treaty law.Part 5 is about Zheng Guanying's judicial system reform idea. InChinese modern times, traditional feudal legal system was very cruel whilethere were exterritorial privileges and rights which seriously destroyedChinese judicial sovereignty. So, Zheng Guanying advocated reforming thefeudal legal system and abolishing the exterritorial privileges andrights. These are very advanced in that period.Part 6 summarizes and appraises Zheng Guanying's legal ideas. Hislegal ideas have three main characteristics——realistic, pragmatic andextensive. Zheng Guanying's legal ideas had huge influence in Chinesemodern society, especially to the capitalist class reform group. This partis also the concluding remarks to the whole dissertation.