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Political Participation and Political Elites in Early Republican China: The Parliament of 1913–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

P'eng-Yüan Chang
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Extract

The expansion of political participation is generally recognized as an essential aspect of modernization. China's twentieth-century experience certainly fits this model. Yet we are far from understanding the processes by which participation expanded in China—especially in the early twentieth century, when complex patterns of social change and institutional reform brought new groups to political awareness. Who comprised the newly participant strata in the first decades of this century? How large and powerful were they? How did their members participate? Who were their leaders?

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , February 1978 , pp. 293 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1978

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References

I am grateful to Andrew J. Nathan, Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, for translating and editing this article. However, responsibility for the data and analysis is mine.

1 Eisenstadt, S. N., Modernization: Protest and Change (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 11–15Google Scholar; Almond, Gabriel A. & Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1963), p. 2 et passimCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Almond, & Powell, G. Bingham Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1966), pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

2 For descriptions of the 1918 and 1921 elections, and a discussion of the vagaries of the original (1913/14) Parliament, see Nathan, Andrew J., Peking Politics, 1918–1925: Factionalism and the Failure of Constitutionalism (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1976).Google Scholar

3 “The Constitutionalists” in Wright, Mary Clabaugh (ed.), China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900–1913 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 143–83Google Scholar; “Ch'ing-chi tz'u-i chü i-yuan ti hsüanchü chi ch'i ch'u-shen chih fen-hsi” (China's first election of provincial assemblies in 1909 and the analysis of the background of the members), Ssu yü yen, V (1968), pp. 1435–45; Li-hsien p'ai yü Ch'ing-chi ko-ming (Taipei: Chung-kuo hsueh-shu chu-tso chiang-chu wei-yuan hui, 1969) [hereafter LHP], pp. 12–40.Google Scholar

4 “Chung-hua min-kuo kuo-hui tsu-chih fa” in Cheng-fu kung-pao [hereafter CFKP], 11 Aug 1912.

5 Since there was still no national system of tax regulations, what was meant by direct taxes (chih-chieh shut)? The Provisional Senate of 1912/13 interpreted this as including taxes on land and grain. Compared to the Japanese definition of the term, which includes both land and commercial taxes, the Chinese conception seems too narrow. In view of the development of commerce in the late Ch'ing, it would have made sense to include such commercial taxes as the shop tax and the pig tax in the category of taxes qualifying one as a voter. See Shih pao [hereafter SP], 9 Dec 1912.

6 The British and American electoral systems did not assume their current form until the 1920s; see Rokkan, Stein, “Mass Suffrage, Secret Voting, and Political Participation,” Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 11 (1961), pp. 132–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 LHP, pp. 12–40.

8 Shun-t'ien shih-pao [hereafter STSP], 15 Dec 1912.

9 SP, 10 Dec 1912.

10 STSP, 15 Dec 1912.

11 Tung-sun, Chang, “Kuo-hui hsüan-chü fa shang-ch'üeh,” Yung-yen, I (1913), 14, pp. 1–16. See CFKP, 11 Aug 1912, for the Kiangsu electoral district boundaries.Google Scholar

12 CFKP, 11 Aug 1912.

13 U.S. Dept. of State archives [hereafter U.S.D.S.] 893.00/1528, 1529. In the district of Fengtien-fu, there were 374,011 regiṣtrants of whom 224,000 voted; in Chiang-ning hsien, 24,227 of an eligible 31,018 voters cast ballots.

14 SP, 10 Dec 1912.

15 SP, 10 Dec 1912; U.S.D.S. 893.00/1563.

16 SP, 24 Feb 1913. Although victory usually required about 30 votes, there were cases where it required 60 or more; see CFKP, 15 Aug 1913.

17 LHP, pp. 9, 18.

18 SP, 19 Jan 1913.

19 Ibid.

20 SP: 10, 22, 23 Jan 1913; STSP: 4, 24 Dec 1912.

21 Record of interview with Chung Pai-i (deposited at Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei), pp. 21, 22.

22 Duverger, Maurice, Political Parties (New York: John Wiley, 1963), p. xxv.Google Scholar

23 SP: 18 Dec 1912, 31 Jan 1913; STSP: 31 Dec 1912; U.S.D.S. 893.00/1541.

24 I-sheng chih hui-i(Hong Kong: Ch'un-ch'iu tsa-chih she, 1966), p. 79.Google Scholar

25 SP, 30 Jan 1913.

26 STSP, 8 Dec 1912.

27 U.S.D.S. 893.00/1529.

28 STSP, 8 Dec 1912.

29 Yen, Tseng, “Chung-hua min-kuo ti-i-chieh kuo-hui shu-yao,” Chung-kuo i-t'an, No. 5 (1957), pp. 15–18.Google Scholar

30 LHP, p. 17.

31 Scott, James C. has discussed the association of corruption with rising participation; Comparative Political Corruption (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972).Google Scholar

32 STSP, 1 Jan 1913.

33 STSP, 16 Jan 1913.

34 STSP, 12 Dec 1912.

35 STSP, 16 Dec 1912.

36 Cf. Nathan (n. 2 above), pp. 44–47, 239–61.

37 STSP, 12 Dec 1912.

38 Hsin-hai ko-ming hui-i lu (Peking: Chung-hua Book Co., 1961), II, pp. 181–83.Google Scholar

39 Chung Pai-i interview (n. 21 above), pp. 277–28.

40 Note 38 above, p. 405.

41 STSP, 26 November 1912.

42 SP, 27 January 1913.

43 SP, 27 February 1913.

44 On T'ang's many disagreements with the T'ung-meng hui, see LHP, pp. 143–51.

45 Peking, 1916.

46 Tsui-chin kuan-shen lü-li hui-pien (Peking, 1920); jōhōbu, Gaimushō, Gendai Shina jimmeikan (Tokyo, 1928)Google Scholar; local gazetteers.

47 Our sample, not being random, may thus be biased in the direction of the more highly educated and more distinguished members; in the absence of complete data, there is no way to correct for this. However, two considerations should increase our confidence in the results. First, the educational and vocational differences between the republican M.P.s and the Ch'ing assemblymen are so marked that it is doubtful whether further data would substantially affect the overall comparison. Second, among the M.P.s on whom data are missing are some 106 members of the delegations from the border areas of Mongolia, Tibet, Tsinghai, Sin kiang, and Kansu. All these persons were appointees of the central government; and in keeping with the Peking government's conciliatory policy at that time, they were mostly selected from among the hereditary nobles and princes. Since few of these men had new-style educational or career backgrounds, their exclusion does bias our results towards an exaggeration of the new-style element in Parliament. But on the other hand, since these members were not elected, their back-grounds are not indicative of trends in political participation and elite formation. Leaving aside these 100 persons, we have data on approximately ¾ of the elected members of Parliament, which provides a sound statistical basis for confident generalizations.

48 The sources give not actual birthdates but ages in sui, which cannot be translated accurately into Western-style “years of age.” In traditional Chinese reckoning, a child is one sui old at birth and adds a sui at each subsequent lunar new year. A 35-sui-old man might be either 33 or 34 years of age in Western terms, depending on his date of birth.

49 Dogan, Mattei, “Political Ascent in a Class Society: French Deputies 1870–1958” in Marvick, Dwaine (ed.), Political Decision-makers (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1961), p. 61.Google Scholar

50 The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 92.Google Scholar

51 LHP, pp. 28–30.

52 Chung-li Chang, The Chinese Gentry (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press), pp. 182–83; Ho, Ping-ti, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 50–51.Google Scholar

53 Chinese Intellectuals and the West, 1872–1949 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of N. Carolina Press, 1966), pp. 168–174.Google Scholar

54 Dogan (n. 49 above), pp. 71–72.

55 Ibid.

56 CFKP, 23 November 1913.

57 For definitions of traditionalism and modernity, see Black (n. 50 above), pp. 9–26; Apter, David, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 83, 319Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, “Some Observations on the Dynamics of Tradition,” Comparative Studies in Society and History [CSSH], XI (1969), pp. 451–75Google Scholar and “Tradition, Change and Modernity: Reflections on the Chinese Experience” in Ho, Ping-ti & Tsou, Tang (eds.), China in Crisis (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 753–74Google Scholar; Shils, Edward, “Tradition,” CSSH, XIII (1971), pp. 122–59Google Scholar; Bendix, Reinhard, “Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered,” CSSH, IX (1967), pp. 292–346.Google Scholar