The Study Of Chinese Foreign Administrative System In Beiyang Period

The period of Beiyang government, China’s diplomacy has been basically modernized. Foreign administrative system is the main embodiment of this aspect. During this period, China’s domestic war between different warlords leaded to regime change frequently, and foreign powers stepped up invasion to China. But as a result, the External representations of beiyang government can run normally, and "treaties revision diplomacy" diplomatic policy is orderly run, part of the lost sovereign rights had been recovered, and diplomats group had arise. All those were mainly based on Beiyang government’s foreign administrative system.Beiyang government reformed the foreign administrative system which had shaped in the late Qing dynasty. Foreign powers is no longer the emperor’s private belongings, according to the principle of separation of three powers, it was distributed to the head of the state, the congress, and the judicial organs in this period. But in different periods the rights of three organs were shifted. According to "the provisional constitution of the Republic of China", the powers of the president is severely limited by Congress, and the parliament which was responsible to the congress; According to "The ROC Constitution," The president’s power unlimited enlarged, but the Congress was reduced to be an advisory machinery. According to "the constitution of the Republic of China"; the rights between the president and the congress has basically realized the balance; According to " Interim Government of the Republic of China ", the ruling which centralized all the state powers, not only the head of state, but also the congressional dominance, and the head of government. The check and balance of powers in accordance with the principles of democratic and republic had been destroyed. All these changes had a profound impact on the foreign policy, such as " the provisional constitution of the Republic of China " excessively restricted the power of the president, which is a main reason to cause the " The struggle between the Presidential Palace and the State department ". And under the " The ROC Constitution ", the president was not restricted, Yuan Shikai can not be influenced by other people, concentrate on the leadership of the Department of Foreign Affairs to deal with Japan, as result obtain some achievement in negotiations between China and Japan. And the Beiyang government was called the government of the Republic of China, the people, of course, was the masters of the country nominally. In this time, Case was also different with the Qing dynasty, people set up all kinds of organizations, through the demonstration way, put pressure on the government, asked the government to fight for the rights of States and punish the traitors, so they also have a significant impact on diplomacy. All previous mass movement is a good performance, such as "the May Fourth Movement","Boycott of Japanese goods "and so on.Like the late Qing Dynasty, the Beiyang government’s administrative agencies for specific diplomacy, included the Ministry of foreign affairs, Embassies and consulates abroad, the negotiate agency and negotiate department all around the country. But in this period, each organization’s organizational structure and operative norm were more reasonable, and professional. The Ministry of foreign affairs no longer like the Tsung-li Ya-men, which involved in all kinds of affairs, but Specialized in foreign affairs only, and it adopted the leading cadres’responsibility system and mechanism of Sub-Division Office for different post, ensured the Ministry of foreign affairs to be professional and efficient. The ministry of foreign affairs, as a full-time diplomatic departments of the central government, alleviate the distress started in the later Qing dynasty, including each foreign affairs agency lacked coordination, cloud not consistently face foreign powers, so that foreign powers can maneuver among various agency or political groupings, resulting in the loss of state rights, and Local separatist. The layout of Embassies and consulates was reformed by Beiyang government, especially previous pluralistic was greatly reduced, and the staffs inside the Embassies and consulates were no longer the ambassador or consul’s servants, who were advanced and retreated with them, in this time the staffs were dispatched by a specialized agency, they specialize in the relevant work, although supervised by ambassador or consul, they must be responsible for domestic competent departments. this status of the negotiate agency and negotiate department has been improved, and carry out diplomatic matters under the unified leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, those shows that Beiyang government gradually recover the diplomatic power belongs to the central government, avoiding local authorities privately negotiations with foreign country, flattering foreign powers and selling out national rights. In addition to three conventional external negotiation institutions, Beiyang government also had some temporary consulting agencies, such as "committee of foreign affairs","Tariff Commission", and "treaty research society ", these institutions were relevant to treaties revision diplomacy policy of Beiyang government. In the warlord war Era, when the political situation is not stable, and government changed frequently, these bodies sometimes even become the Chinese diplomatic decision-making mechanism.In order to regulate the behavior of diplomatic personnel, the government had formulated a series of personnel mechanism, first of all was classifying diplomatic staff, and the appointment procedures of the various grades of diplomatic personnel were different. Secondly, taking examination of the personnel selection system, qualification system, and standby system, which ensured the diplomatic staffs to be specialization and professional. At the same time, the government also had a strict definition about diplomatic staffs’rights and obligations.In short, the period of Beiyang government, the foreign administrative system of China is progressive, but it cannot eliminate the defects under that age. In order to learn those progress’s affection on the China’s diplomacy, this paper take advantage of Chinese attending of World War I and Paris peace Conference in1917to1919as a case. By recounting Beiyang government recovered all the privileges of Germany and Austria in China in the war, actively made plans for draft resolution to Paris peace Conference and delegation problem before the end of the war, asked Entente powers to amend the unequal treaties in the Paris Peace Conference, made efforts to resolve the of Shandong problems etc, show the Beiyang government’s diplomacy administrative system Impact on the Chinese diplomacy.