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Chapter 631 Federal Provincial Autonomy and Unification

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    However, as the only KMT Prime Minister with the potential to challenge the KMT¡¯s position, Sun Yat-sen originally believed that a weak China should adopt a three-step process of military government, political training and constitutional government, and suppressed the opposition forces and opposition voices within the KMT.  As he said in his congratulatory message at the inauguration ceremony of Zhang Zuolin's "National Unification Committee":

    ¡°The path China is taking should be one of unity, strength, and peace, but peace is not achieved overnight. The presidential election bribery that occurred some time ago is a good footnote.

    In the first ten years when warlords arose, I always hoped to establish a military-controlled government and a strong leader. Only in this way can we ensure the stability of China's political situation and the unity of the country. This is called the period of military rule.  During the military regime, priority was given to eliminating warlords and bandits, and military control should be implemented. Now this step has been basically completed.

    During the political training period, priority should be given to infrastructure construction and preliminary civil rights training, and one-party governance should be implemented.  Only a strong political power can ensure that this premise is implemented, and the People's Party undoubtedly represents the basis of this political power.

    The conditions for the implementation of constitutional government are that more than half of the counties and cities in the country have the conditions to elect and recall local heads, and if citizens have the conditions to launch a creative review, they can elect and convene the National Assembly to formulate a constitution, return power to the people, and implement a modern political system of multi-party competition.  "

    Zhang Hanqing published an article in the "People's Party Daily" to explain whether the People's Party will take the initiative to hand over power and implement multi-party competition during the constitutional stage: "First of all, we must state that the People's Party is the leader of the country, but the power of the country lies with the people. When a  When a political party cannot adapt to the needs of the people, it will naturally be eliminated, and the People's Party will be no exception.

    In order to prevent the demise of the people and the collapse of the government, we will introduce the electoral system within the party and the country at the appropriate time.  That is, the party's committees at all levels are elected by the party's grassroots committees and implement the party's centralization system to limit individual power and gather collective wisdom.  When conditions are appropriate, we will introduce a direct election system for the head of state and chief executive officers.

    After the country is completely reunified, a new National Congress system will be established, and the people will exercise their rights to manage the country and supervise government agencies in accordance with the law.

    We will establish an administrative oversight committee under the legislative branch to impeach administrative deviations at all levels.  In addition, an evaluation agency for government civil servants, namely the Examination Committee, will be established.  Both agencies are affiliated with Congress and are not beholden to any party.

    In addition to the executive and legislative branches, an independent judicial system will be established that is not controlled by any political party.  This is the principle of the separation of legislative, judicial, and administrative powers and the five-house system including the Supervisory Yuan and the Examination Yuan that Mr. Sun preached. Of course, the reality will be somewhat different.  "

    The highest power of the country is now concentrated in the "National Unification Council", and its first important mission at the beginning of its establishment is to establish the state and political system.  We must know that after a long war, the system of the Republic of China has been riddled with holes. What kind of country the People's Party will build is a big issue that all factions need to take seriously.

    Although the voices of war are endless, we have just experienced a vote-buying and a war. What people urgently need is peace, and what each faction needs is a redistribution of power that is beneficial to them.  Zhang Hanqing once again used the means of distant diplomacy and close attack to enable the Feng faction to completely control the government not only militarily, but also politically and economically.

    With regard to the handing over of political power to the "National Unification Council", the princes with vested interests have no objections. They prefer to establish a decentralized rather than centralized country.  This tradition began with the rise of the Hunan Army Group that annihilated the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. As governors gradually took over military, financial, and employment rights, the local governments became stronger and the central government declined.

    The Qing government had already foreseen the crisis of centralization.  What particularly shocked the Qing government was the "Southeast Mutual Protection" in 1900.  At that time, because of the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion to "support the Qing Dynasty and destroy the foreign countries", the Qing government "declared war" on the foreign powers.  However, the governors of the southeastern provinces ignored the orders of the Qing government. Instead, they agreed with the great powers to temporarily suspend their troops and protect the southeast.

    This incident has given the Chinese an important revelation.  In 1901, Liang Qichao introduced Swiss federalism to the Chinese, saying that China had a tradition of local autonomy since ancient times. If federalism could be adopted, many of China's problems would be easily resolved.

    Therefore, the Qing government is also thinking about how to establish a new model of centralization and decentralization.  In 1906, the Qing government announced that it was preparing to establish a constitution. One of the important contents was to refer to the constitutional experience of Western and Eastern countries and use the reform of the official system as a breakthrough to rebuild the decentralization model between the central and local governments.

    However, the Qing government was not a truly modern government after all. The hundreds of years of "family and world" thinking had been deeply ingrained in the bones, making it difficult to truly share power.  So imitating the constitutionIn this case, it becomes "the great power is unified in the imperial court, and the common government is public opinion." In other words, the central government still holds the real power, but only allows the people to participate in political discussions.

    But even with such limited concessions, the Qing government could not actually make it. Its real idea or "inertial thinking" was to weaken the current powers of governors. The powers of newly established governors in each province are only equivalent to those of Japan's prefectural governors, and their financial, military and  The return of power to the central government is to strengthen the power of the central government.

    The decision of the Qing government caused serious dissatisfaction among local forces.  Yuan Shikai, the Governor-General of Zhili and Minister of Beiyang, publicly opposed it and said it was difficult to do. The governors of various provinces also expressed dissatisfaction, so the case was temporarily shelved.  The Qing government imitated the constitution and claimed to solve the problem of the authority of the central and local governments, but the result was the opposite, which was very unsatisfactory.

    The real starting point of regionalism in modern China is the "Hunan New Deal" led by Chen Baozhen, Huang Zunxian and others.

    The Hunan New Deal took place after the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1899.  Since the defeat of the war, the Chinese people have begun to review the development problems of the past few decades. A basic consensus inside and outside the government is that there was too much control over society in the past. China has no civil society, no "self-organization", no news media, and no modern state.  The social management methods possessed.

    This special opportunity was keenly seized by Chen Baozhen, Huang Zunxian and others, and the reason why they conducted experiments in Hunan and succeeded was mainly because of the uniqueness of Hunan itself - the coexistence of extreme radicalism and extreme conservatism.

    In terms of location, Hunan has a special window - Guangdong.  Hunanese still prefer Guangdong when they go out to work.  Guangdong is the region with the earliest and most contact with foreigners in modern China.  Through the window of Guangdong, Hunanese saw the advantages of Western civilization. Therefore, there are a large number of Hunanese who advocate learning from the West, such as Zeng Guofan, Guo Songtao, Tan Sitong, and Mao Zedong.

    On the other hand, Hunan¡¯s position in China is the hub between the north and the south, the gateway to the southwest, and is the focus of competition for all forces.  Perhaps because of this reason, Hunan people have particularly strong thoughts of xenophobia and resistance.  When Germany sent troops to occupy Jiaozhou Bay in Shandong in 1897 and set off a frenzy to carve up China, Hunanese prepared for independence based on two years of experience in self-government.

    This is of course not a split, but a preparation to use Hunan's independence to accumulate strength for China's future reconstruction and reunification, as Liang Qichao and others expected, and to retain a rejuvenation base.

    Hunan¡¯s independence did not become a reality in 1897 because the Qing government, in view of the huge impact of the Jiaozhou Bay Incident, began political reforms in the second year for the Reform Movement of 1898.  The Reform Movement of 1898 added impetus to local autonomy in Hunan. The Nanxue Society in Hunan Province was a political group that advocated local autonomy.

    Regrettably, Hunan¡¯s local autonomy has not come to fruition.  The Reform Movement of 1898 was reversed in the autumn of 1898, and Hunan's experiment in local autonomy disappeared with the dismissal of Chen Baozhen and Huang Zunxian.

    In the early 1920s, the former pioneers of local self-government became the leaders of the "federal self-government" movement.  Not only was Hunan the first to declare autonomy in November 1920, when Governor Tan Tingkai and Division Commander Zhao Hengti issued a telegram, it also officially promulgated and implemented the Hunan Constitution on New Year's Day in 1922.

    Inspired by Hunan Province, political strongmen such as Liu Xiang of Sichuan Province, Lu Tao of Guizhou Province, Chen Jiongming of Guangdong Province, Chen Guangyuan of Jiangxi Province, Lu Yongxiang of Zhejiang Province, Chen Shufan of Shaanxi Province, Zhang Zuolin of Northeast China, and Wu Peifu of North China,  They have successively used various methods to try to govern themselves.

    However, we have seen a rather strange phenomenon, that is, in the early 1920s, autonomy movements were raging in various places in China. However, after several years of turmoil, China finally gained a new unification, and the provinces were still within the scope of a unified China.  Within China, no province has truly separated from China.

    This is actually normal, because the Chinese have had a problem of regional "loyalty stratification" since ancient times. Hunanese are loyal to Hunan, but they will not forget China. After all, there are only a few people who are really willing to make a province independent and permanently separate from China.

    China¡¯s autonomy since ancient times has been an adjustment of governance methods under unified conditions relative to Greater China. Therefore, when the autonomy movement develops to a certain stage, it is the beginning of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms".  According to the political logic of the 1920s, the autonomy of each province will inevitably gradually lead to the joint governance of several provinces.

    The rise of the Fengcian faction is a natural example. Zhang Hanqing¡¯s role is actually to grasp this trend and make the movement of "federal autonomy" faster and more stable.

    Until the People's Party headed by Zhang Hanqing proposed "China's reunification and return to the three stages of military rule, political training, and constitutional rule", Sanbanziyi became the country's guiding ideology, and local autonomy and localism were re-incorporated into Zhang Hanqing's ideological framework  .  In this framework, China will still implement local autonomy, but it will go beyond the central level and directly into counties, and no longer allow each province to become an autonomous body.

    This is obviously to prevent the provinces from becoming powerful and local autonomy turning into local separatism.  For Zhang Hanqing, under the circumstances of occupying the right time, location, and harmony, a superficial unity will never be allowed, and the original military strength factions in all places will never be allowed to hold local power.  It¡¯s just that they no longer openly claim to implement federalism, but carefully develop local power within the framework of nationalism.

    It¡¯s just that the Fengtian Clan is a ¡°United Provincial Autonomous Government¡± that already controls 17 provinces, which is equivalent to more than half of China. Does it need to be ¡°united¡± again?  (Remember the website address: www.hlnovel.com)The provinces became stronger, and local autonomy evolved into local separatism.  For Zhang Hanqing, under the circumstances of occupying the right time, location, and harmony, a superficial unity will never be allowed, and the original military strength factions in all places will never be allowed to hold local power.  It¡¯s just that they no longer openly claim to implement federalism, but carefully develop local power within the framework of nationalism.

    It¡¯s just that the Fengtian Clan is a ¡°United Provincial Autonomous Government¡± that already controls 17 provinces, which is equivalent to more than half of China. Does it need to be ¡°united¡± again?  (Remember the website address: www.hlnovel.com
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