Chapter 4 4. Liang Qichao and the aborted two-party system of the Republic of China

After the outbreak of the Revolution of 1911, just as people from all over the world rushed back to China to share the feast of the revolution, the true enlightenment master Liang Qichao returned to China after 13 years of exile until October 1912. At this time, it has been a year since the Wuchang Uprising. Liang Qichao did this after careful consideration, because he needed time to observe the political trend of the early Republic of China, and being overseas and jumping out of the circle of interests would help him keep a clear head.After a period of thinking, Liang Qichao came up with a very unique opinion, which he put forward in his letter to Yuan Shikai. The political forces in the early years of the Republic of China can be divided into three factions. The first faction is represented by Yuan Shikai. The second faction is the moderate reform faction transformed from the constitutional faction in the late Qing Dynasty, and the third faction is the emerging revolutionary faction represented by Sun Yat-sen.

According to Liang Qichao's vision, the first faction does not need to form a political party, the second faction must form a political party, and the third faction should be transformed into a political party; in this way, the bureaucratic faction holds the actual executive power, and the constitutional faction and the revolutionary faction form a political party in the parliament. Competing for legislative power; the constitutional faction and the bureaucratic power faction should unite against the revolutionaries, so that the smooth transition of the Republic of China can be successfully completed.

Obviously, Liang Qichao has a lot of prejudices against the revolutionary party: "The old revolutionary faction has been divided into two since now. Those who are purely emotional will never cooperate with my father... But the nature of this faction is only suitable for destroying It is not suitable for construction...the government treats those of their generation, not to be coercive, and the coercion will turn back, and the flames will be blatant...Only by using a healthy big party to make it a fair party, he will be inferior Defeat is not enough to be a hindrance. A healthy and large party must look to the old constitutional party and those with political ideas in the old revolutionary party.”

Although Liang Qichao initially put forward the idea of ​​a two-party system in his letter, he also pointed out: "Since a republic is the form of government, it cannot be a powerful politician unless it is supported by the majority of public opinion... A good politician must secretly be the leader of public opinion." Lord, but pretending to be a servant of public opinion on the surface, it is because of this that it can be successful. Today's China, unless it uses the meaning of enlightened autocracy, is not enough to achieve orderly and serious governance... However, in the republic, it is not in the name of obeying public opinion, and it cannot be enlightened. The reality of autocracy."

To sum up, Liang Qichao actually advocated the gradual cultivation of party politics under enlightened autocracy, which is consistent with his previous thinking.As early as during the New Deal period in the late Qing Dynasty, Liang Qichao believed that constitutionalism was the only direction for China's development, but he also believed that enlightened autocracy was an inevitable stage to move towards constitutionalism. Conditions such as laws and local self-government are immature, and looking at the world, most other democratic and constitutional countries have also gone through a period of preparation for enlightened autocracy.

Liang Qichao was conceited. He once said, "China's future depends on my return to power, and it cannot be saved." The three major political forces in the early Republic of China, the revolutionary faction and the Beiyang power faction, had their own masters, but the original constitutional faction The dragons have no leader. If Liang Qichao can step forward, it is still possible to act as a leader.In fact, only Liang Qichao had this appeal at that time. During the New Deal period in the late Qing Dynasty, Liang Qichao used "Guofeng Bao" and other newspapers to advocate responsible cabinets and party systems, and organized China's first political organization "Zhengwenshe" with the goal of promoting constitutionalism.In the "Social Covenant" of Zhengwenshe, Liang Qichao put forward four clear programs: "One is to implement the parliamentary system and build a responsible government; the other is to formulate laws and consolidate the independence of judicial power; authority; the fourth is prudent diplomacy and maintaining reciprocal rights."

Judging from the first three points, Liang Qichao had already proposed the ideological framework of separation of powers and local autonomy, which was undoubtedly advanced at the time.After the Qing court implemented the preparatory constitution, Liang Qichao organized the "Xianyouhui" in February 1911 through domestic comrades Xu Fusu, Sun Hongyi and others to prepare for the political party competition after the constitution.However, before the day when the constitution was enacted, the revolution broke out suddenly, and Liang Qichao's idea of ​​gradual progress had to be changed and started again.

Different from Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao conformed to the general trend after the Wuchang Uprising and gave up the idea of ​​a constitutional monarchy, and instead advocated party politics under the republican system.However, around the time of the Republic of China, the original constitutional faction was divided, and various political parties and organizations had different factions and various names. The most important one was the "Republic Construction Discussion Conference" initiated by Tang Hualong, Lin Changmin, Zhang Jiaao and others (former members of the "Xianyouhui"). The "United Party" organized by Zhang Taiyan, Zhang Jian, Xiong Xiling, Cheng Dequan, Tang Wenzhi and others; the "Republican United Party" organized by Sun Hongyi and others; the "National Association" initiated by Fan Yuanlian, Huang Yuanyong, Ji Zhongyin and others; The "People's Society" organized by Li Yuanhong, Sun Wu, Zhang Zhenwu, Liu Chengyu and others; the "Republic of China Gongdang" organized by the old bureaucrat Cen Chunxuan in the late Qing Dynasty; the "United Republican Party" organized by Gu Zhongxiu and Wu Jinglian; "Together", there are many, and there are dozens of them.

Among these political parties, Liang Qichao had the closest relationship with the "Republic Construction Symposium". Although there were many elites in the party, the number of them was relatively small, so the influence was not considered great.It was not until August 1912 that the "Republican Construction Seminar" merged with the "National Association", "Republican Unionist Party" and other groups to form the "Democratic Party", but at this time other political parties were also merging and reorganizing one after another. In the parliamentary elections at the end of the year, they lost a lot and won only 30 seats. This is really an insignificant small party in the so-called "Eight Hundred Arhats" Congress (870 seats).

After the failure, Liang Qichao immediately crossed the party and joined the relatively powerful "Republican Party" in order to make up for it. The "Republican Party" was formed in May 1912 from the merger of the "United Party" and "Minshe". Zhang Taiyan, Wu Tingfang, Na Yantu, Xiong Xiling, Fan Yuanlian, Cheng Dequan and others. After the establishment of the "Republican Party", branches were set up all over the country, and the number of party members exceeded 100,000 at one point, making it the second largest party after the "KMT" (formerly the Tongmenghui) (with nearly 250 seats under control).

As early as the establishment of the "Republic Construction Symposium", Liang Qichao drafted a discussion paper on "China's National Development Policy", which clearly proposed the idea of ​​implementing a "party cabinet"; "Cabinet", there must be "two healthy political parties" as a premise, just as he mentioned in his early "Xin Min Shuo", "Party politics, every country must have more than two parties, one of which is in the government and the other is in the opposition." The reason why Liang Qichao joined the "Republican Party" was to create a big party that could compete with the Kuomintang. However, even if the "Republicans" and "Democrats" merged, they would not be completely sure of controlling more than half of the seats in Congress, so Liang Qichao included the "United Party" in the merger plan. The "United Party" was originally organized by Zhang Taiyan. At this time, the party leaders have been replaced by Wang Yitang, Wang Yinchuan and others. The party has always been against the revolutionaries, and Yuan Shikai is behind it. Its momentum is not small, and it probably holds seats. Around fifty. For Liang Qichao's "two-party competition" political concept, most people from the three parties expressed their support, and the merger went very smoothly.At a three-party joint symposium, Liang Qichao pointed out: "At present, the three parties of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the United Party cannot hold a majority in Congress. This phenomenon is extremely worrying. Whether it is for the consideration of the three parties, or For the sake of the opposition parties, all three parties should be merged, so that China can gradually face a confrontation between the two major parties, so that party politics can gradually get on the right track.” At the end of May 1913, under the leadership of Liang Qichao and others, the three parties of "Republic", "Democracy" and "Unity" held a merger meeting in Beijing and announced the establishment of "Progressive Party".The meeting elected Li Yuanhong as the chairman, Liang Qichao, Zhang Jian, Wu Tingfang, Sun Wu, Na Yantu, Tang Hualong, Wang Geng, Pu Dianjun, and Wang Yinchuan as directors, and honorary directors included Feng Guozhang, Zhou Ziqi, Xiong Xiling, Zhang Shaozeng, Yan Xishan, Hu Jingyi, Yin Changheng, Cai There are more than 20 celebrities including E, Tang Jiyao, Lu Rongting, Zhang Zhenfang, Yang Zengxin, Cheng Dequan, Zhu Rui, Zhuang Yunkuan, and more than 100 councilors. The lineup is strong and the party has begun to take shape. In terms of personnel, most of the backbone of the "Progressive Party" are constitutionalists or old bureaucrats in the late Qing Dynasty. Under the influence of Liang Qichao, the "Progressive Party" tended to support Yuan Shikai's government. China fought against the "KMT" and supported Yuan Shikai's centralization of power.Of course, this is not out of the scope of party politics, so there is no need to criticize it. The Tongmenghui still held a key position in the political situation in the early years of the Republic of China, but it also encountered many internal challenges.After the success of the revolution, Zhang Taiyan, Zhang Jian and others wrote articles calling for the Tongmenghui to end the secret organization during the revolutionary period and transform it into an open political party organization (so-called "de-revolutionization"). , is this meaning.And the early revolutionary Zhang Shizhao, after returning from studying law and politics at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, also proposed "destroying the party and building the party" to echo Zhang Taiyan.The so-called "destroying the party and building the party" means "destroying the party without guidelines and building a party with guidelines", creating two opposing political platforms for the masses of parties, and preparing for China's move towards a two-party system. After Yuan Shikai came to power, Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing looked down on the revolution for a while, and turned to social work, and Song Jiaoren was responsible for the party affairs of the Tongmenghui.In terms of ideology, Song Jiaoren and Liang Qichao have similarities. After the founding of the Republic of China, he has been committed to transforming the Tongmenghui from a secret revolutionary party into an open and legal ordinary political party, so as to realize the proposition of his party cabinet.In Song Jiaoren's view, the revolutionary party "seeks destruction by fierce means", while the political party "seeks construction by peaceful means". It is the general trend. Under the situation that various parties and factions across the country are merging and reorganizing one after another, the Tongmenghui also feels great pressure. In March 1912, the Tongmenghui announced in Nanjing that it was formally reorganized into an open political party, and its membership rapidly increased to tens of thousands in the following months, becoming the most powerful political party in the early years of the Republic of China.However, the Republican Party has also greatly increased its power after merging other parties. When it re-elected the provisional Senate, the League no longer had an absolute majority.Therefore, the reorganization of the Tongmenghui and the merger of other small parties with similar political views have become a top priority. In addition to the major parties mentioned above, there is also a "United Republican Party" known as the "third party", which occupies a certain number of seats in the provisional Senate. The "Unified Republican Party" was formed by the merger of three political groups. The key figures included Cai E, Jing Yaoyue, Wu Jinglian, Gu Zhongxiu and other important figures in the political circles of the North and South armies. Among them were both revolutionaries and constitutionalists.The party adopts a middle-of-the-road route, advocates conciliation, and is politically between the Tongmenghui and the Republican Party, thus becoming the target of the Tongmenghui. However, the merger of the two parties encountered many twists and turns.First of all, the "United Republican Party" did not want to be "annexed", so they advocated not using the original name of the Tongmenghui; In addition to Jiaoren, Liu Kuiyi and others resolutely "merging the party", some old members of the League opposed merging other parties, while other members of the League expressed firm opposition to changing the name of the League that had been in use for many years. For example, Cai Yuanpei claimed, "We cannot If you deny yourself and follow others, you must never change your name." At this time, after hearing the news that the "United Republican Party" was going to merge with the Tongmenghui, the Shanghai "Guomin Gong Party" headed by Cen Chunxuan, a famous minister in the late Qing Dynasty, also sent representatives to Beijing to participate in the merger negotiations. In addition, another request was put forward, that is, to cancel the "equal rights for men and women" item in the Tongmenghui's program. Under the mediation of Song Jiaoren, the Tongmenghui accepted the conditions proposed by the "United Republican Party" and the "Kuomintang Gongdang" in August 1912. "Meeting" was also merged after the negotiation.As a result, the new "KMT" was established, and the name Tongmenghui withdrew from the stage of history. Song Jiaoren also advocated a two-party system. He made it very clear in his declaration on the reorganization of the "Kuomintang" that "the prosperity of a country's political parties should only be due to the confrontation between the two major parties, and it is not appropriate to separate the small groups." Since the party is prosperous, we also hope that the opposition party will be prosperous so that they can be evenly matched."It is said that Song Jiaoren had secretly visited Liang Qichao. Whether his idea of ​​"the two parties taking turns in power" came from this is still unknown. Song Jiaoren once naively believed that as long as the "KMT" can get more than half of the seats in the Congress, "and then in power, it can form a one-party responsible cabinet. If it retreats in opposition, it can also closely supervise the government so that it has What they are afraid of and dare not act rashly, what should be done, also makes it afraid and dare not do it." In the same way, the "Progressive Party" also made similar remarks, "Therefore, when one party is in power, the development of other Political opinion, there must be a party criticizing its gains and losses, studying its interests, and supervising it so that the government does not dare to do evil.” From this point of view, the two-party system of the Republic of China seems to have great hope. Liang Qichao once clearly put forward the concept of "political confrontation" in his article "Political Confrontation" to discuss the rationality of the two-party system.Liang Qichao asserted that a true democratic country must have resistance in order to be stably integrated into a whole. There must be an opposition party if there is a ruling party. …After all aspects of resistance have been eroded, the national political power becomes absolute, and the result must be autocracy, and the result of the rise of autocracy must be revolution. The stable operation of any government requires healthy competition between the two parties to form a stable political confrontation , and bipartisan politics is the best way to maintain political antagonism."It can be seen from this that Liang Qichao supported the "Democratic Party", joined the "Republican Party", and finally organized the "Progressive Party". His motivation was to build bipartisan politics, eliminate autocracy and revolution, and create a stable environment for national development. However, political parties are originally a political product of the British and American countries. In Chinese history, only "cliques" have been heard. In August 1912, "Truth Pictorial" published a cartoon, which said: "What is called the party, what is called the faction, originally a group of people, but also slandered him; what is called reform, what is called revolution , Squeeze out and seek camps are even more serious than before." Zhang Shizhao also criticized in the "Minli Daily": "The so-called radicals attack people without choosing people, and curse people without choosing words. They are really crazy and ignorant people. Moderate people, attached to power, spreading rumors and causing trouble... This kind of political party dispute is purely a conflict of personal opinions, not a debate of political opinions." In the book "History of the Political Parties of the Republic of China" published in 1924, the author Xie Bin pointedly pointed out that these political parties in the early years of the Republic of China were not a combination of political opinions, but a combination of feelings, power, and even money. , It’s just that the ancestors used to call it the Gentlemen’s Party and the Little People’s Party, but now people use the term of a political party.These so-called parties are all clubs of upper-middle-class scholar-bureaucrats (including the "Progressive Party" and the "KMT"). They have no people as their foundation, and they have no practical party program. Many parties don't know their own party program very well. Yes, it's just for decoration and decoration. Zhao Bingjun, the Minister of Internal Affairs in the early years of the Republic of China, also jokingly said: "I didn't know what a party is, but many people persuaded me to join the party. The 'United Party' also sent some party cards, and the 'Republican Party' also sent some party cards. I can also send it. I also opened some to look at, and some ignored it.” At this point, Zhao Bingjun, who had 8 party certificates in his arms, touched his head and smiled to the people around him: “How did I know What party is coming!" After the establishment of the "KMT", Zhao Bingjun became the new prime minister, and soon he was involved in the "Assassination of Song Jiaoren" and indirectly triggered the "Second Revolution", which disrupted the party politics that had just started in the early years of the Republic of China.After defeating the Southern Revolutionary Party, Yuan Shikai coerced the Congress to elect him as the official president by means of a "citizen group". Later, he banned the qualifications of "KMT" members in the name of suspected chaos, and paralyzed Congress.As a result, Song Jiaoren died before his achievements were completed, and the two-party politics designed by Liang Qichao to oppose the "Progressive Party" and the "KMT" also disappeared with the final dissolution of the Congress. When Liang Qichao devoted himself to building the two-party system of the Republic of China, he seemed to have ignored or had no way to do anything about the Beiyang faction. He wishfully pinned his hope of "enlightened autocracy" on Yuan Shikai, but Yuan Shikai, who knew nothing about Western party politics, was An old-school figure who is "not enlightened enough, but more autocratic".Under the premise that warlords big and small hold guns, whether it is a multi-party system or a two-party system, they are all unrealistic imports.For these military strongmen, guns give power, and so-called "constitutional democracy", "parliamentary politics", and "two-party system" are all nonsense and nonsense.As a result, the premature demise of the two-party system in the Republic of China was completely expected.In fact, this is not only the tragedy of Song Jiaoren or Liang Qichao alone, but the common tragedy of almost everyone in that era.