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SPACE-TIME REVOLUTION: THE PROVINCIAL CONSTITUTIONALISM MOVEMENT AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF LOCAL SYSTEMS IN MODERN CHINA
Ling, Bin
Ling, Bin
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Abstract
One of the crucial constitutional moments and historical turning points in modern
China was the Provincial Constitutionalism Movement.
This movement commenced in 1920 in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province in
south-central China. Initiated by Mao Zedong and local intellectual and political elites
spanning generations, it rapidly expanded to southern China and swept across the entire
country in the early 1920s. This constitutional transformation triggered the first revolution of constitutional space-time in modern China: the previously monocentric
state power structure evolved into a polycentric one, and the imperial-era local
administrative framework was transformed into a republican provincial system.
Consequently, for the first time in Chinese history, modern local systems were
established within a constitutional framework, affirming the constitutional status of
provinces, provincial systems, and provincial powers.
In current studies, the Provincial Constitutionalism Movement has long been
greatly underestimated due to the dominant Tocquevillian paradigm, which reduces any
constitutional change to a binary framework of French-style centralization versus
American-style decentralization. According to this framework, scholars interpret the
Movement as Chinese federalism—a short-lived and failed attempt at decentralization
within a predominantly centralized state. This binary paradigm is deeply rooted in a dualistic yet monocentric spatio-temporal view, which this book terms “constitutional
monocentrism.” In contrast, this book proposes a “general theory of constitutional
space-time,” aiming to explain constitutions and revolutions from a broader
constitutional perspective of spatial configuration and temporal transition. From this
perspective, the Provincial Constitutionalism Movement of the 1920s in China
demonstrated a polycentric republican revolution based on leading provincial capitals.
The Movement, in terms of constitutional time, was not merely a “new beginning”
influenced by Western impacts. Rather, it emerged as an adapted product of the continuous accumulation and eventual convergence of various Chinese institutions from
the imperial period to the republican era. Consequently, China did not ultimately
establish a federal state. Unlike the revolutionary constitutional movements of the
United States, India, and others characterized by mass mobilization, the Chinese
constitutional path, exemplified by the Hunan Self-Government Movement—the first
provincial constitutionalist movement beginning in 1920—was mainly distinguished by
establishmentarian elite integration. This unique approach may be termed in this book
as the path of Establishment Transformation. Since the constitutional reforms of the late Qing Dynasty, China’s constitutional
trajectory has continuously repeated the path to Establishment Transformation,
manifesting in various forms. Super capitals, such as Beijing and Changsha, functioned as
strongholds of the insider establishment, under the decisive influence of the incumbent
regime. The initial constitutional struggles centered on the dilemma of whether to
dismantle or preserve existing local governments inherited from China’s feudal imperial
era. Paradoxically, the ostensible “new beginning” heralded by provincial
constitutionalism ultimately represented a reversion to the “old ending,” demonstrating
the persistent influence of historical institutions on China’s constitutional development.
The Provincial Constitutionalism Movement, in terms of constitutional space, was
not a simple process of decentralization, but rather a (re-)centralization process
centered around provincial capitals. This revealed the longstanding polycentric constitutional configuration of China, with potentially multiple and mutable political
centers. This movement unveiled a constitutional feature of modern China that deviates
from stereotypical perceptions of the centralized nature of the Chinese Constitution:
Chinese provinces played a crucial role in national transformations, akin to American
states, which markedly contrasts with the French model centered around Paris.
Before the movement—as one might expect—during the period of the late Qing
Dynasty and the early Republic, constitutions had always been drawn up in Beijing, the
national capital. However, as the movement arose, the center of constitutional change
shifted from Beijing to Changsha and other provincial capitals. New provincial
constitutions established new regimes in a few super capitals—i.e., the provincial
capitals that had served as both constitutional centers and ancient dynastic capitals
where political power was concentrated time and again—and these constitutions were
simultaneously deployed in the competition to seize power on a national scale. Scholarly analyses of provincial constitutionalist movements during the Republican
period have consistently exhibited a significant oversight: an overemphasis on the
“constitutional” aspect while underappreciating the “provincial” dimension, particularly
the pivotal roles of provincial capitals and provincial systems. Within the constitutional
space, the provincial capital functioned as the center of the province, while the
provincial system represented the province’s evolution over constitutional time. The
provincial system revolved around the provincial capital, and conversely, the provincial capital was predicated on the provincial system. Together, these dual elements
constituted the fundamental components of the “province” within the Chinese
constitutional space-time continuum.
The interplay and evolution of provincial capitals and provincial systems reveal that
beneath the constitutional crises and struggles was a fundamental transformation of a
deep constitution, comprising the feudal configuration of constitutional space and the
generational transition across constitutional time. This deep constitution, a legacy of the
feudal imperial system from the late Qing Dynasty, had undergone only partial reform in
modern China, with its core structure largely preserved and adapted. As a result, this
deep constitution continued to shape constitutional transformations in modern China,
giving rise to new constitutional crises with each attempt at constitutional change. The trajectory of the Provincial Constitutionalism Movement, marked by its ascent
and decline, catalyzed a more intense resistance and critical examination of the vestiges
of the feudal imperial system among Chinese intellectual and political elites, exemplified
by Mao Zedong and his contemporaries. This heightened scrutiny propelled them
towards embracing a revolutionary path aimed at dismantling the establishmentarian
party and the entrenched deep constitution. In turn, this shift in approach led to the
second constitutional space-time revolution in modern China.