The Research Of Zhang Junmai's Constitutionalism Thought

Beginning from the late Qing dynasty, the Chinese history has presented a complex and tortuous scene. Zhang Junmai is just a person living in this complex background. His experience was very rich, he witnessed the revolution against the Qing dynasty, the scuffles of the warlords, the despotism of the Kuomintang and the foundation of the P.R.C. Because of his complex experience, Zhang's constitutionalism thought always developed with the reality and politics and presents a rheological characteristic. He believed, studied and advocated constitutionalism in all his life. He has great contribution on the nation's constitutionalism construction. So he is called "The father of constitution" in Taiwan. He was crazy about constitution; his biggest ideal was formulating a fabulous constitution , establishing an authority parliament, and realizing the constitutionalism. Just for this, he always sent hope on and yielded to the authority government, hoping realizing his ideal by the authority. At last, he and his Democratic society party attended the false conference held by the Kuomintang and became "the last criminal" in the list of the Communist party.Now the study on Zhang of the academic world almost stays in his specific constitutionalism thought. Few scholars have put in-depth study on his thought. And because of different political position, the academic world in the mainland always evalues him in a political position, lacking of objective and academic evaluation. This article tries to change the currency and gives a comprehensive evaluation on his constitutionalism thought of different periods, with regard to his historical background from the academic angle. We hope we can summarize some essence which is good for our constitutionalism construction.The first part of this article presents the historical background of Zhang's constitutionalism thought. The foreign education, the constitutional trend and the excellent constitutional practice in the world all have great influences on Zhang's thought.The second part of this article presents the essential contents of Zhang's constitutionalism thought. It combs and compares his each thought, according to the historical evolution, including Political viewpoint concerning option between power and freedom, human right thought, design for central political structure, federal system thought and standpoint of political party. From this, we can get a more objective understanding.The third part of this article presents an overall evaluation on his constitutionalism thought. It marks three significant characteristics of his thought and analyzes the historical progress and limitation of several important thoughts.After all of this, it summarizes the meaning and harvest of studying Zhang's constitutionalism thought. His thought contains much essence, which has enlightments on the development of China, including the constitutionalism construction, the party construction and guarantee of human right and so on. I think this just is the purpose we make research on his constitutionalism thought.