A Study On The Activities Of The Gentry In The Period Of The Qing Dynasty

Political modernization is evitable in the progress of political participation, while the foundation of Central Advisory Council is an attempt to transplant foreign institution and abandon the political participation. This essay takes Wang Rongbao as the study object who was the officer, gentry and senator of Central Advisory Council, to analyze gentry’s involvement in Central Advisory Council and its background.After the Opium War and Gengzi Incident, the Qing dynasty thoroughly promoted the New Deal Reform, which concluded the education reform, customs reform and constitutional reform. The foundation of Central Advisory Council and Provincial Advisory Bureaus marked as the peak of constitutional reform. Divided into imperial-ordered and elected ones, the councilors have promoted the bills such as Congress Opening, Impeaching Grand Ministor of State, Passing New Criminal Law and so on. As the imperial-ordered councilor, Wang Rongbao was the founder and participant of Central Advisory Council. He united with the elected councilors to promoting bills against the government, when he also played as a conciliator to regulate the operation of Central Advisory Council, to boost the steady and gradual way of struggles.This essay reviews and elaborates whole course of establishment, operation and failure of Central Advisory Council. Combined with the experience of Wang Rongbao, this essay takes several cases to analyze the deep context of Central Advisory Council itself. This essay holds the point that structural elements such as society, international politics and state power made profound influence to the political pariticipation of Chinese gentries. The change of social structure unionized and politicalized the gentries who were scattered in traditional China. The gentries get the power to take unanimous actions in Central Advisory Council and Provincial Advisory Bureaus. In international context, the gentries was stimulated by foreign incursion and demonstration effect of Japan, and benefited by Japan’s oversea study policy, came into the positive constitutionalists latterly. The decline of state power left vast space for gentries’political movements. Finally, the separated and weak imperial court couldn’t reach consensus with Central Advisory Council, which leaded to the failure of Central Advisory Council. Included of Wang Rongbao, the constitutionalists as gentries turned into the revolutionaries. The end of Central Advisory Council signed the transformation of china from centralized state bureaucratic country into the situation that civil and military governors and gentries were getting power while Qing imperial cournt was losing it, and the outcome of Xinhai Revolution and independent of provinces.