Journal of East China Normal University (Philosoph ›› 2018, Vol. 50 ›› Issue (1): 15-65.doi: 10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5579.2018.01.003

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The Frustration in Politics and the Reflection of Chinese People in the Early Years of the Republic of China: The Notional Rising of the Constitution, the Congress, Political Parties as well as Their Actual Failure

YANG Guo-qiang1,2   

  • Online:2018-01-15 Published:2018-01-26

Abstract: Since the mid of the 19th century, Chinese people had started to observe the Western system of representation from distance, and then elaborated on this alien system with Chinese experience and from Chinese perspective for 70 years and gradually found out that there was no gap between the superior and the inferior in the West, the success of powerful countries in the West and East was due to constitution and congress, and then only congress as a "powerful supervisor" can "stabilize the society and benefit the nation". Chinese people appreciated such a system, admired it and then decided to establish it in China. After 70 years' elaboration and interpretation, China witnessed the most dramatic change in 2,000 years under the name of the republic after the Revolution of 1911, easily transforming from monarchism to the representative system. However, since the transplantation of the foreign system into China, the constitution, the congress, political parties and congressmen coined from the West had been in fierce political conflicts. In chaos, the situation became the opposite side of what had been interpreted for 70 years in a short time. For Chinese people in the conflicts and struggles, the collision and asymmetry between the representative system and China's situation became much obvious. Later, the representative system transplanted by the generation in the early years of the Republic of China became the object of their reflection. Correspondingly, in the great change of thought, Chinese history and Chinese situation once covered by the Western trend of thought came to the vision in the form of contradiction between Chinese problems and the representative system, which caused political figures who used to advocate the representative system to doubt the system and finally abandon it, raising the curtains of the following scenes where new paths would be found.

Key words: representative system, situation of the nation, monarchy complex, republican government, ruling the nation by party, social structure