The Introduction And Obstacle Of America's Constitutionalism Concept To The Late Of Qing Dynasty

The soul of constitutionalism lies in confinement to power, which was demonstrated in the design of American constitutional system mainly in the forms of principles such as people's sovereignty, confinement to government's right, and republic government, and mechanisms such as federalism, schism and balance of government's right. Since 1840, thanks to further efforts in transmission of western missionaries and Chinese scholar-bureaucrats, propagandizing of merchants, tourists and students, and research of officials, America's constitutionalism concept was spread to China in the late Qing Dynasty. With the development of constitutional thoughts in the late Qing Dynasty, America's constitutionalism concept was firstly demonstrated in the allegation of early bourgeois reformists, modernists and revolutionists. However, Japan's constitutionalism mode became the original version of transplantation in the late Qing Dynasty of China instead. There are many reasons to explain the fact why America's constitutionalism mode failed to be transplanted to China. The thesis elaborates the failure from the perspective of incomplete transmission, namely, the lack of social background of transmission, repellency of traditional culture, the carrier of religion as the transmitting means, obstacles from language and culture, geographical disadvantages, and America's situation at that time, etc.Based on all factors mixed together, America's constitutionalism mode just penetrated into China's political structure in ideaistic layer. Although China's local autonomy, judicatory independence could more or less embody the spirit of America's constitutionalism, they were transmitted to China through Japan. Hence, basically, America's constitutional system and concept were not designed into China'political structure. However, the transmission of America's constitutionalism to China in the late of Qing Dynasty established cultural condition for its debut on China's political stage.。To comprehend the transmission of America's constitutionalism to China well, we should review China's constitutional background at that time, when elite class studied constitutionalism for the sake of saving China and its people from extinction. In such a circumstance, when they were studying western constitutional culture, Chinese people would not probe into its root, but just intercepted part of it, taking the most convenience and highest efficiency into their consideration. Hence, their failure to recognize the profound cultural connotation would naturally result in fruitlessness, and...