A Research On Provisional Constitution-making In The Late Ch’ing Dynasty And Local Autonomy In Gansu Province

At the end of Ch’ing Dynasty, along with the aggravation of west countries’invasion and the further intensification of domestic social contradictions, to maintain its own interests, the Ch’ing government makes up its mind to carry on social and political reforms. Among all the schemes, the preparation for constitutionalism is the most systematic and influential one. In this self rescue reform, which dominated by the feudal ruling class, the practice of bourgeoisie local autonomy has carried on across the whole country. National bourgeois constitutionalists devoted themselves to the preparation of provincial autonomy actively. And the implement of local autonomy achieved remarkable success. The bourgeois constitutionalists joined the local self-government institutions actively, which have played a significant role in managing social affair guiding public opinion and restricting the local administrative authority. At the end of Ch’ing Dynasty, the construction of local self-government in Gansu province had been basically completed on schedule. However, as the constraints of local financial, ideological and the feudal forces, sharp contrasts of local autonomy had been appeared between coastal provinces and Gansu-province. For instance, the Parliament, the Council, the board of directors of the councils at all levels and other local self-government institutions have all been controlled by the local old gentries, which specified the reason why local self-government institutions not only failing to restricting the local administrative power, but growing up to be minions of local feudal diehards, and sparing no effort to destroy the revolutionary forces of Gansu. As a result, the local autonomy with the bourgeois attributes had been variated in the development process of Gansu. Therefore, after the detailed investigation on the late Ch’ing Dynasty’s constitutionalism and the constitutional reform in Gansu, selective analysis on the local autonomy in Gansu will be presented in this paper, which including the social influence, limitations and the difficulties of the provincial autonomy in Gansu province. The specific performance on the local autonomy in Gansu will be inspected, and the reasons for the "variation"will be found out. In this paper, an in-depth research on the constitutional reform in Gansu is proposed in order to provide some useful historical reference for the modernization of Gansu.