The Study Of Provincial Assembly Of Hunan Province

The Provincial Assembly, as the important foundation of the local parliamentary system in the modern China, was the product of the constitutional movement in the late Qing Dynasty, and played a significant role on the political stage of that age. There were twenty one Provincial Assemblys in total all over the country of that time. The Provincial Assembly of Hunan Province, as one of those Assemblys, participated in lots of vital activities within two short years, and deeply influenced the national political climate of that time. Based on the book,named The Documents Collection of the Provincial Assembly of Hunan Province, was published by the Hunan People’s Publishing House in the year of2010,the editor of this book is Yang Pengcheng,and the former study and the documents restored in Hunan Province Library which related to the Provincial Assembly of Hunan Province, the article has a all-sided investigation relatively of the Provincial Assembly of Hunan Province. From the aspect of election, this article firstly reviews the process of the two kinds of election which held by the Provincial Assembly of Hunan Province, and makes the course of the first election of assemblyman clearly. Then, to be preparatory for the description of the activities of the assemblyman, it analyzes the social background of the elected eighty two assemblymen and the candidate assemblymen with the view angle such as age, title and geographical distribution. After the foundation of the Provincial Assembly of Hunan Province, the assemblymen took part in many campaigns like bill discussion, road protection of Hunan Province and national parliament request. As a result, it got more and more influential. The relationship between the Provincial Assembly of Hunan Province and the local government changed while the assemblyman were concerned with different activities inside or out of Hunan Province. This two branches cooperated well at the first annual meeting of the assembly and then turned to fight and quarrel step by step. During the second annual meeting, especially for the different attitude to the Case of the Public Debt of Hunan Province, they broke up with each other. Generally speaking, given the two year’s existence from the foundation to the dismiss of the Provincial Assembly of Hunan Province, it had gotten a lot of achievements in Hunan Province like promoting the development of the social economy, protecting the rights and improving the official management. But, the most important result was that it speeded up the modernization of Hunan Province. The Provincial Assembly of Hunan Province was regarded as the pioneer of the national constitutional movement, and its assemblyman impressed the citizens quite deeply. These assemblymen made a huge contribution to the democracy of modern China. With the particular analysis of the Provincial Assembly of Hunan Province, the article clears up its process of foundation, the political activities which hosted or participated by the assembly and the relationship between the assembly and the local government. The article reveals the course of the development of the Provincial Assembly of Hunan Province, and it concludes that the assembly was a quite important force on the political stage inside or outside of Hunan Province. All the conclusions of this article will be beneficial to the study on the modern history of Hunan Province.