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Unit 6: Socio-Economic Bases and Salient Features of the Constitutions

leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in 1935 who had all along advocated guerilla tactics Notes
in place of positional warfare in meeting the KMT attacks and had looked upon the peasantry as
the main revolutionary force in the country. However, as Chairman of the Chinese Soviet Republic
set up in Kiangsi in 1927 (and abolished in 1937), he had earned popularity by advocating a policy
of land reform that tolerated small land owners. What, however, forced Chiang Kai-shek to work
in alliance with the communists was the imperialistic posture of Japan. It afforded a good occasion
to the communists to fight against the Japanese forces during the second World War and yet
weaken the foundations of the KMT by perfecting their guerilla based system and carefully building
up their strength and popular support in the countryside.
When the second great war ended. China remained under the formal control of Chiang Kai-shek
and his KMT, while the real power had well slipped into the hands of the communists. Facts
indicate that by this time, the communists had established some 27 ‘liberated areas’ with an
aggregate population of 85 million and had enormously expanded the Red Army, now one million
strong. A sort of civil war was now unleashed. To deal with this problem, the KMT government
convened a national constituent assembly in November, 1946 that was boycotted by the communists
and the Democratic League. The new Constitution was framed and enforced on the new year’s
day in 1947 that was declared invalid by the communists. Elections under the new Constitution
took place in November, 1947 and Chiang was elected as the President. The KMT regime, however,
lacked cohesion and corroded by snowballing corruption, rapidly alienated the sympathy of the
people in the countryside as well as of the intellectuals and students in the towns. Despite the
massive support of the United States, the KMT could not stem the tide of advancing communism
and finally collapsed when Chiang Kai-shek escaped from the capital and sought refuge in the
island of Formosa (Taiwan). Thus, on October 1, 1949 the People’s Republic of China came into
being. It heralded the significance of this remark that “under the communist dispensation, the
monopoly of one would have to be asserted, something which even the strongest dynasties had
never achieved.”
Chinese Constitutionalism
The story of constitutionalism in China begins from 1912 when she became a republic and gave to
herself the ‘most modern type of Constitution’ wereby on January 1, 1912 Sun Yat-sen was formally
instituted as the President of the provisional republican government. On the same day, the National
Council at Nanking adopted a provisional Constitution and the first national flag with five stripes
representing the five races of the Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans and the Moslems. However,
the period which followed the revolution of 1911 became ripe with vast problems, complexities
and confusion as a result of which power fell into the hands of the military despots who had little
sympathy either for the discarded system or for the adoption of political democracy. Moreover,
Sun’s action of making Yuan his successor resulted in the abrogation of the provisional Constitution
in 1913 and the inauguration of a period of political instability that could not be controlled until
the Kuomintang established its firm control in 1923 and then adopted a ‘Permanent Constitution
of the Republic of China.’ As declared in the Preamble, the new Constitution was made “with the
object of establishing the national dignity and maintaining the national boundaries and in order to
promote the welfare of the people and uphold the principles of humanity”.
After the seizure of power by the communists in 1949, the work of making a new Constitution was
entrusted to a committee set up by the Central People’s Government on Jan. 13, 1953. The committee
met under the chairmanship of Mao that prepared the new Constitution of communist China. It
was adopted by the National People’s Congress on Sept. 20, 1954. As claimed by the founder of the
new regime, the Constitution recorded five fundamental changes in his country since the inception
of communism – China’s emergence as a really independent state after shaking off all shades of
colonial dominations, termination of the centurie-sold hold of feudalism, achievement of internal
peace and an unprecedented unification of the mainland after terminating the era of chaos,
attainment of a higher degree of democracy after putting an end to the situation in which people
had no power, and, finally, rehabilitation of the economy of the country with the co-operation of
the Soviet Union. It was replaced by a new constitution in 1975.

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