Analysis On The Social Basis Of Constitutionalism Reform During The Late Of The Qing Dynasty And The Early Republic Of China

Civil society is opposite to political country, it is the social foundation of constitutionalism and it promotes the growth of constitutional state. First, civil society regulates the running of state power and protects the private rights. Western constitutional history can be regarded as the history of the control of state power and the protection of private rights. After the western bourgeois revolution, European countries implement it to their national legal systems. The distinction between national interests and personal interests in public and private laws implies the protection of the individual interests. Because it delimits the scope of the exercise of state power, the state power can not violate civil society. Civil society implements autonomy of private laws. On the other hand, civil society participates in national legislative decision-making by sending representatives to the legislature. Civil society not only confirms the rights and freedoms of citizens in a legal form, but also stipulates strict procedures for the operation of state power and accountability system. So it makes sure that acts of state run on the track of law. Secondly, civil society gives birth to constitutional culture. Constitutional state is not a simple pile of rules and institutions. It must also have constitutional culture system which is beyond institutional entities. Constitutional culture is a sense, idea and value within society. It penetrates into the rules and norms and supports democratic constitutional government. The development of capitalist market economy makes the civil society and the political state separate from each other in reality. Opposite to political country, civil society is against interference to the social sphere and the personal affairs from the state power and it emphasizes social autonomy and personal freedom. The economic forms of civil society, that is market economy which promotes the formation and development of freedom, equality ideas. The history of western constitutionalism shows that constitutional state is the product of the development of civil society. The struggle between civil society and political country promotes the born of constitutional state.During the end of Qing dynasty and the early of the republic of China, under the pressure from all aspects, the central government began to implement constitutionalism. But the preparation for constitutionalism implemented neither since 1906 nor the early years of the republic of China, failed to carry out. The fundamental cause for the failure of constitutionalism reform is that the social support to constitutionalism is not strong enough. Civil society has not grown up enough to the social forces to support the political reform successfully. With the deepening of the modernization of modern China, the inherent social structure changed greatly in China, the traditional social class system composed by scholars, farmers, artisans and merchants was impacted greatly, the mobility between social classes increased. Between the end of the 19 th century and the early twentieth century, an emerging social entity formed in China, that was civil society. During the opium war in 1840, western constitutional thought has started to be introduced into China intermittently. Some open-minded man among the landlords had a preliminary understanding of the western world. But after the Sino-Japanese war, western constitutional thought was really concerned by the public.The practice of western constitutional history shows that civil society has a close relation with the democratic constitutionalism. Civil society is the prerequisite of constitutionalism, that is to say we must separate civil society from political state effectively to achieve constitutionalism. During the end of the Qing dynasty and the early of the republic of China, civil society formed, but it still had extensive connections with the country. On the other hand, the country is still the main controller of the social resources, the growth of civil society depends on the loose and support of national policy and it hasn’t had the strength against the country. As a result, constitutionalism which lacks support from the mature civil society was doomed to fail during the end of the Qing dynasty and the early of the republic of China.During the end of the Qing dynasty and the early of the republic of China, the growth of civil society depends on the national devolution and policy support, so civil society is difficult to play the role of constraint on state power, thus the constitution was in an awkward position in the country’s political life, that is constitution without constitutionalism. In order to make China walk towards the road of constitutionalism as soon as possible, we must construct our Chinese civil society by deepening reform of the economic system, improving and perfecting market economic system, developing all kinds of civil society groups, guiding by the country, improving the competence of the population and training civic awareness.