SPACE-TIME REVOLUTION: THE PROVINCIAL CONSTITUTIONALISM MOVEMENT AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF LOCAL SYSTEMS IN MODERN CHINA

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.