The hallmark tensions in Chinese politics today first took shape in the 1911 Revolution.
In the winter of 1911, legendary revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen returned to China after years of exile and found the country in the grip of a sweeping transformation. Between October 10, when junior officers in the Hubei New Army mutinied in Wuchang, and November 22, when the Sichuan constitutionalists declared independence from the Qing, fourteen provinces had severed their ties with the government of the Manchu dynasty.
Political elites throughout China were defecting from the court en masse. Among the most influential were the constitutionalists from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, who proposed a plan for uniting all of the southern forces into one polity under the banner of republicanism. It was they who initiated the truce between the Qing Beiyang Army and the revolutionary armies in Wuchang, elected the southern delegates to negotiate with the northern leader Yuan Shikai, promoted Sun Yat-sen as the first provisional president of the republic, and penned the abdication edict for the Qing court.
This edict, which claimed that “the power to govern is now transferred to all in the country (tongzhiquan gongzhu quanguo)” and that “a constitutional republic is now the state system of our country (gonghe lixian guoti),” signaled the end of the monarchy and the birth of the Chinese republic. This seismic political shift was premised on the belief that “republicanism had been accepted by public opinion (yulun) in China,” and the constitutionalists looked to the federalist system of the United States as their model, vowing to “immediately emulate the United States of America in calling upon a national convention, regarding it as our temporary authoritative legislature.”
Clearly, 1911 was a major rupture in Chinese politics, and while Sun Yat-sen and other anti-Manchu revolutionary groups had been laboring for years to bring down the Qing, a critical question still remains: Why did the Qing collapse so utterly in a mere four months’ time after an impressive 267 years of rule? Not so long before the 1911 Revolution, the Qing dynasty had weathered the years-long Taiping Rebellion (fought from 1850 to 1864) that likewise aspired to unseat the Manchu government from power. It was one of the bloodiest wars in human history and the single largest conflict of the nineteenth century, and yet the Qing emerged victorious. What changed in the intervening fifty-odd years that left the imperial government so vulnerable to defeat in 1911?
A contemporary observer, contrasting the loyalty of officials and gentry during the Taiping Rebellion with their complete lack of loyalty in the 1911 Revolution, offered this insight:
When Wuchang was lost [during the Taiping Rebellion], from the provincial governor, treasurer, and surveillance commissioner, to the prefect and the magistrate, all officials in the city committed suicide. Countless gentry and commoners followed suit. This signified merely that the officials knew the meaning of a righteous death, and the gentry and commoners repaid the officials with gratitude. Because so many people had died for justice, order was easily restored after the Taiping Rebellion. Today, however, we have heard too many stories of officials and gentry running away and too few stories of them dying for justice. This is an immeasurable disgrace to the dynasty.
As noted by this observer, order was so quickly restored after the Taiping Rebellion because so many people—officials, gentry, and commoners—had been willing to die because of their faith in the old regime. In 1911, by contrast, faith in the old regime was nowhere to be found. The betrayal by the political elites explains the speed and ease with which the dynasty fell, and also reveals the extent to which the old forms of legitimacy had lost their power. For the end of the Qing signaled not just the end of a dynasty but also the collapse of the old political system and the emergence of new ways of thinking about the very nature of government. Between 1860 and 1911, something fundamental had changed in Chinese political values, ideas, and culture, and that change deeply informs the question of how and why the revolution took place.
In The Politics of Rights and the 1911 Revolution in China, I sought to provide the first comprehensive study of the political culture of the 1911 Revolution, which witnessed the emergence of new rhetoric and unprecedented political mobilization that included mass media, demonstrations, and public meetings, all used to expeditious effect in confronting the Manchu government. This new rhetoric emphasized “rights,” both political and economic rights, and was closely linked to the notion of the sovereignty of the polity, that is, “the people as the masters of the nation.” This newly emergent political culture was enabled by the political elite—the constitutionalists in particular—but it took definitive shape only in the midst of revolution, when it was given voice and form by a larger political class, which was itself molded by its responses to the new discourse. By the end of the decade of revolution, more Chinese had learned a new set of political repertoires: competing ideologies challenged the traditional cosmology of order and harmony; propaganda became associated with political purpose; and mass mobilization became an effective means of conducting politics.
The 1911 Revolution has left an enduring but paradoxical legacy. The revolutionary process created a new, democratic political culture in which popular sovereignty and republicanism were indisputable political principles. However, it failed to build a viable, constitutional state. To begin with, Chinese constitutionalists had their own understanding of constitutionalism. For them, constitutionalism was a means to achieve popular sovereignty. It was aimed not at establishing a limited government but at strengthening state power, on the condition that the state would be led by them, or that sovereignty would lie with them. During the revolution, while claiming to represent the people, these leaders’ exercise of power was often unlimited and oppressive, and the valorization of “public opinion” spawned further scrambles for public office, with all contenders maintaining that they “embodied the people.” Key constitutional concepts of “separation of powers” and “limited government” were never implemented in any serious fashion. Impassioned public opinion rather than careful institutional design became the main mechanism for realizing political change.
This tension between the resilience of republican rhetoric and the failure of constitutional practice, which grew out of the 1911 Revolution, is still the very hallmark of Chinese politics to this day. Despite a succession of eleven central government constitutions written between 1908 and 1982, Chinese constitutions have not carried actual authority, the rule of law has yet to gain real purchase in the political system, and officials exercising governmental powers have not been amply bound to observe the limitations on power that are set out in the ostensibly supreme, constitutional law.
Nevertheless, if we view the political transformation in 1911 in the longer timeframe of twentieth-century Chinese revolutions, we see that the concept of rights was a paradigm shift that began among the elite but continued to gradually take root in the broader population. That shift laid the foundation for the subsequent popular revolutions in twentieth-century China. It is precisely the emphasis on equality and popular sovereignty that deepened the revolution’s hold on Chinese society, leading to the ultimate success of the Communist mass movement. A consistent theme running through constitutional reform, the 1911 Revolution, the Campaign to Defend the Republic, the Nationalist Revolution, the Communist Revolution, and finally, the Cultural Revolution, was a claim that “the people are the masters of the nation.” For many political leaders and activists, ideas about the people’s rights and sovereignty were central to the values and expectations that shaped their intentions and actions. In many ways, the 1911 Revolution inaugurated China’s modern era: it was through this revolution that modern Chinese politics came into being.
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