The Research On Territorialism In The Formulation Of The Constitution During Initial Years Of Republic Of China

This paper is the research on the territorialism in the formulation ofthe constitution in the first Congress during initial years of republic ofChina, which is about the how constitution to deal with the issue of powerrelations between central and local government. The discussion of thisissue has gone through two stages. Constitution-framers had fierce debatesabout provincial system, division of powers between central and localgovernment and provincial Constitution. Finally, constitution of theRepublic of China was promulgated, which was considered as a federalconstitution in China’s modern history. By studying the formulation of thisconstitution, this paper attempts to reveal how this federal feature isformed.With the influence of localism in the late Qing dynasty, a trendadvocating federalism emerged in the early years in Republic of China.People who advocated federalism argued that the relationship betweencentral and local powers should be re-arranged in accordance with federalstates such as United States of America. For the above reasons, theformulation of constitution was influenced by this trend. This study,therefore, is concerned with the destiny of the theory of federalism in theCongress.This paper will be divided into three parts and further refined into several small problems According to the order of issues discussed in theCongress and the relationship of the issues: the first part, whether theprovincial system should be incorporated into the Constitution; the secondpart, how to divide powers between central government and local authority;the third part, the issue about provincial constitution: the last part is theconclusion.