Challenge And Response: The Late Qing Dynasty Crisis Of Legitimacy Study

The Qing Dynasty was the peak of Chinese traditional social development, which created brilliant civilization of agriculture, and led the world at one time. It was also the beginning of crumbling of Chinese traditional society. In the middle of the 19th century, under the shock of Western great powers, China, who followed a policy of national isolation at that time, was enforced to open its door and started the progress of modernization. The late Qing Government can not effectively respond to these challenges from both domestic and aboard, and serious crisis of legitimacy appeared, which were comprehensive, including ideology, political structure, political authority, and so on. Then, how and why the Qing Dynasty came to end? I try to set up a systematic framework of analysis on the basis of former research results, and study this issue in more aspects. Under the background of the political science, I will study the crisis of legitimacy in late Qing by means of the theory of legitimacy. I think, nowadays the PRC has been in the international environment of a dual structure of"Advanced & Lag"and in the domestic environment of a dual structure of"Strong State &Weak Society"。The government also faces serious challenges. That Studies how to avoid the crisis of legitimacy and improve the ability of effectively responding to challenges plays important role in China's political development. So, it seems quite important to discuss further on the issue of the crisis of legitimacy in the late Qing Dynasty both in theory and in practice.The dissertation is comprised of five parts. The Introduction puts towards the reasons of this research, introduces the current academic achievements on this subject, and defines the four key concepts: power, interest, legitimacy, the crisis of legitimacy. Under the basic framework of analysis"Challenge and Response", I attribute the relevant elements of crisis of legitimacy to three analysis----the crisis of ideology identity ,the crisis of political structure, and the crisis of performance-----are mutually independent and closely connected with each other, forming the comprehensive framework.The first chapter analyses the crisis of identity of ideology. Confucianism was the main ideology of traditional society. Serious crisis of identity of Confucianism appeared in late Qing. I will analyze it from three aspects: the crisis of identity of the idea on"Tiandao", the crisis of identity of the idea on Unification and the crisis of identity of the ethic idea.The second chapter discusses the crisis of political structure. The traditional political structure can not deal with and solve serious political conflicts which appeared in late Qing. I will analyze it from three aspects: the conflicts of the supreme power level, the conflicts of bureaucracy level and the conflicts between the central and local governments.The third chapter discusses the crisis of performance. The late Qing Government did not have the ability to provide sufficient public products, such as safety, fairness, political participation and the economic development. The appearance of the crisis of performance wavered the legitimacy basis of the late Qing government.The conclusion points out that political consensus and political authority play important roles in political development, especially in developing countries and give some advice accordingly.