Chapter 13 12. Yuan Shikai became president and Tang Shaoyi formed a cabinet in Nanjing

On the same day that Yuan Shikai took office as interim president in Beijing, the Nanjing interim government also announced the "Interim Constitution" formulated by the interim Senate. The "Provisional Constitution" has seven chapters and fifty-six articles. Because Yuan Shikai was about to take office as the interim president, the senators in Nanjing also rushed to draft the articles before Lao Yuan took office. The "Provisional Constitution" is the first constitutional document of a democratic republic in the history of China. It clearly states in Article 2: "The sovereignty of the Republic of China belongs to all citizens"; in the entire second chapter, all the provisions are The rights of the people are very characteristic of the times, and they are much more advanced than the "Constitution Outline" of the Qing court, which stated that the emperor was sacred and inviolable.Of course, these are fictitious. The most lethal thing in the "Temporary Constitution" is actually about the power limitation of the president.

Originally, on the organization of the Nanjing Provisional Government, Zhang Taiyan, Song Jiaoren and others advocated a responsible cabinet system to limit the power of the president, but their proposal was strongly opposed by Sun Yat-sen.Sun Yat-sen believed that the responsible cabinet system is only suitable for peaceful times, but now is an extraordinary period of revolution. How can revolutionaries set up a legal system to prevent leaders they trust?Sun Yat-sen also said, I will not listen to such opinions, I will become a waste, and I will miss the great plan of the revolution.Therefore, when Sun Yat-sen became the interim president, the Nanjing interim government adopted a presidential system.

Speaking of the cabinet system and the presidential system, they are actually imported from European and American countries. Here is a brief introduction.The origin of the democratic revolution in Western countries was the British Revolution in the mid-seventeenth century, which went through several iterations, and finally turned the king into a puppet of the parliament in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.In other words, although the British king is the head of state, he is only a symbol of the country and does not hold actual power, which is mainly in the hands of the Parliament.Thus, the UK is a democracy but not a republic because their head of state is inherited rather than elected.

However, the fact that the king does not hold power also leads to a problem, that is, the parliament only has legislative power and not executive power.After years of political operations, the UK has finally formed party politics. Whichever party wins the parliamentary elections will organize the government, which is commonly referred to as "cabinet formation". This is the first responsible cabinet system in history. The prime minister and all cabinet members are accountable to Parliament. More than a hundred years after the British Revolution, revolutions broke out in the British colonies on the American continent. As a result, the United States became independent and a brand new country was born.As a new country, the United States has no burden of autocratic history, and the resulting democratic regime of separation of powers is also due to unique innate conditions.The U.S. Congress is similar to the British Parliament, but in terms of executive power, Americans have a unique approach, which is to combine the head of state and executive power into one, which is known as the presidential system.The president of the United States is not elected by Congress, but is elected by candidates selected by various political parties, and the winner forms a new government, which has nothing to do with Congress.It can be seen from this that in terms of executive power, the presidential system is much more relaxed than the responsible cabinet system.

France, where the democratic revolution was the most intense, reconciled the characteristics of Britain and the United States and formed another unique system, that is, France has both a president and a cabinet prime minister.The reason why France has a president is because they need a head of state, and the reason why they have a prime minister and overall executive power is to prevent the president from arrogating power.As a result, the French president has become a decoration, with only symbolic significance (the discussion here is limited to before World War II. After World War II, the French political system has undergone new changes, and the power of the president has increased a lot).

The above three are all democratic regimes. Among the countries in the world at that time, there was another special regime under the banner of democracy, which was the pseudo-constitutional monarchy in Germany and Japan (this also refers to before World War II).The reason why Germany and Japan are said to be pseudo-constitutional monarchies is because although they are similar in form to the United Kingdom, the power of the monarch is no different from that of traditional autocratic countries. The so-called parliament and cabinet are only supporting institutions for the monarch, just like the constitution The first article stipulates that the power of the monarch is supreme.

When the constitution was being prepared in the late Qing Dynasty, the original intention of the Qing government was to imitate the model of Germany and Japan to fool the common people, but the result was that "a false constitution leads to a real revolution", because once a democracy is born, it will grow on its own. When it comes to democracy, the constitutional process will not develop as planned by the authorities. The fall of the Qing Dynasty actually proved this truth.In the end, the Wuchang Uprising sounded like a cannon, and people from all over the country responded. At this time, the Qing government hurriedly formulated the "Nineteen Creeds", trying to imitate the true democracy of the British constitutional monarchy, but unfortunately it was too late.

No matter whether it is a real monarchy or a false constitutional monarchy, it will not work in China, because the first requirement of the revolutionary party is a republic, not an emperor, let alone a Manchu emperor. Therefore, constitutionalism was basically not considered when the Nanjing Provisional Government was established. .However, China is, after all, a country with a history of authoritarianism for thousands of years, so how to choose a suitable democratic regime is indeed a difficult problem.At that time, the Nanjing Provisional Government oscillated back and forth between the responsible cabinet system and the presidential system, and finally adopted the American presidential system at the insistence of Sun Yat-sen.

With the abdication of the Qing emperor, Yuan Shikai's succession as the interim president is already a certainty. Now Sun Yat-sen and others are worried again: this Yuan Shikai is an old bureaucrat under the old system, and he knows nothing about the democratic republic system. If the presidential system operates, if it is not done well, the power will get out of control and a new emperor will be created.As a result, Nanjing changed the presidential system in the "Interim Government Organization Outline" to the responsible cabinet system in the "Interim Constitution". At this time, although the president was nice in name, his power was strictly controlled by the prime minister, especially the Senate. Restrictions, which were obviously tailor-made by the Nanjing Revolutionary Party to guard against Yuan Shikai.

Yuan Shikai didn't care much about the "Provisional Constitution" promulgated by the Nanjing Provisional Government. As long as he first became the provisional president and obtained legal status, he would agree to everything in the documents sent by the Nanjing side.After all, the things that are produced there are temporary, and when the time comes when Lao Yuan really becomes the president, everything will have to be done all over again.You know, turning clouds and rain, covering the sky with one hand, is Yuan Shikai's strong point. On the third day after the promulgation of the Provisional Constitution, Yuan Shikai recommended Tang Shaoyi to the Nanjing Provisional Senate in accordance with Article 43 of the Provisional Constitution and organized a new cabinet.Originally, after Yuan Shikai took office as interim president, the Revolutionary Party in Nanjing really wanted to win the position of prime minister, but due to the many setbacks Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing encountered in the early Republic of China (mainly problems of funding, factions, etc.) , to be discussed later), and thus becoming increasingly passive politically, they have no intention of competing for the post of Prime Minister.

Yuan Shikai's nomination of Tang Shaoyi as the prime minister was after careful consideration, because Tang Shaoyi was educated in the United States in his early years, and he was also a Cantonese, so he was easier to be accepted by the southern revolutionaries. On March 11, at the meeting of the Provisional Senate, Yuan Shikai's proposal was successfully passed. Speaking of Tang Shaoyi, the first cabinet premier of the Republic of China, I want to briefly introduce it.Tang Shaoyi, courtesy name Shaochuan, was born in Xiangshan, Guangdong, in 1862 (Xinyou year of Tongzhi, that is, the year when Empress Dowager Cixi came to power after launching a coup d'etat), and was a true fellow with Sun Yat-sen.Tang Shaoyi's father ran a tea comprador in Shanghai, and his uncle Tang Tingshu served as the general office of the Shanghai Shipping Merchants Bureau and the Kaiping Mining Bureau. The Tang family can be regarded as a family familiar with Westernization and open-minded. At a very young age, Tang Shaoyi studied in Shanghai and received new knowledge. In 1874, Tang Shaoyi, who was only 12 years old, went to the United States as the third batch of children sent by the Qing government to study abroad. He finished middle school in the United States and entered Columbia University in New York (the aforementioned Cai Tingqian was also from Xiangshan and was the first The second batch of children studying in the United States).It is a pity that due to obstruction and censure by domestic diehards, all these students studying in the United States were recalled without completing their studies.Tang Shaoyi stayed in the United States for more than 7 years, and was only 19 years old when she returned to China. Due to the failure of their studies, Li Hongzhang felt that it was a pity that these half-launched "returnees" were idle, so he sent these people to various Westernization Schools in Tianjin for refurbishment. For example, Cai Tinggan was sent to Tianjin Naval School and later joined the Beiyang Fleet; He was also able to continue his studies, and in 1885 entered the Tianjin Taxation Office.When Yuan Shikai served as the commercial representative of the Qing government in North Korea, Tang Shaoyi was sent to North Korea to assist in taxation. From this, he formed an indissoluble bond with Yuan Shikai, and followed Yuan Shikai all the time, becoming President Yuan's old subordinate. With Yuan Shikai's help, Tang Shaoyi's official career was also smooth sailing. He successively worked as a minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, governor of Fengtian, and minister of the Ministry of Posts and Communications. In 1908, after Yuan Shikai was kicked out by the regent Wang Zaifeng, Tang Shaoyi, as an important member of Yuan Shikai Group, resigned consciously until Yuan Shikai came out again.In the negotiations with the Southern Revolutionary Party, Tang Shaoyi has been serving as the general representative of the North-South peace talks, which shows Yuan Shikai's trust in him. Everything is difficult at the beginning, and it is not easy to be the first prime minister. On March 25, Tang Shaoyi arrived in Nanjing and began to form a cabinet.Since the Republic of China had just been established, there were many factions and conflicts between the north and the south, so the first thing Tang Shaoyi had to do was to reconcile the contradictions among the various factions and achieve a balance in the distribution of power.To this end, Tang Shaoyi proposed to divide the nine departments of the Nanjing Provisional Government into thirteen departments, except for the seven departments of foreign affairs, internal affairs, finance, army, navy, justice, and education as usual, and divide the industrial department into three departments: industry, commerce, and agriculture and forestry. The Department of Commerce was split into two departments: Communications and Posts and Telecommunications. The purpose of Tang Shaoyi's splitting up of the ministries is to arrange a few more ministers to reconcile some conflicts in personnel arrangements.It is a pity that Tang Shaoyi's proposal was quickly opposed by the Provisional Senate. In the end, the senators only agreed to divide the industrial sector into the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Posts and Telecommunications still belong to the Ministry of Communications and do not need to be separated.Therefore, the Nanjing Provisional Government changed from the original nine ministries to ten ministries. Tang Shaoyi also thought about the selection of the chief ministers of various cabinet ministries.The first is the position of the chief of the army, which is very difficult.According to the thinking of the southern revolutionaries, since Huang Xing is not the prime minister of the cabinet, as the leader of the southern military circles, he should be the chief of the army and chief of staff.But how could Yuan Shikai allow the revolutionaries to take such an important position as the chief of the army?Yuan Shikai's favorite person is his confidant General Duan Qirui. He claimed: "If Duan cannot serve as the Chief of the Army, he will resign as the President." No. In this situation, Huang Xing took the overall situation into consideration and was willing to give in.At the Southern Military Conference on March 28, Huang Xing publicly stated that he would not accept the post of Chief of the Army, and begged everyone not to fight again.When it came to the emotional part, Huang Xing burst into tears, finally calming down the turmoil.Huang Xing was indifferent to fame and wealth all his life, and his motto was "Fame does not need to be self-sufficient, success does not need to be self-sufficient, and success does not deserve to live." He can be described as a moral model among revolutionaries, a solid and kind person. On March 29, Tang Shaoyi submitted to the provisional Senate the list of candidates for the first cabinet ministers: Minister of Foreign Affairs Lu Zhengxiang, Minister of Internal Affairs Zhao Bingjun, Chief of the Army Duan Qirui, Chief of the Navy Liu Guanxiong, Chief of Finance Xiong Xiling, Chief of Education Cai Yuanpei, Chief of Justice Wang Chonghui, Song Jiaoren, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Chen Qimei, Director of Industry and Commerce, and Liang Ruhao, Director of Transportation. Judging from the list, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lu Zhengxiang was a non-partisan person and one of the best diplomats at the time; Minister of Internal Affairs Zhao Bingjun, Chief of the Army Duan Qirui, Chief of the Navy Liu Guanxiong and Chief of Communications Liang Ruhao were Yuan Shikai's men; Chief of Education Cai Yuanpei and Chief of Justice Wang Chonghui Song Jiaoren, Director of Agriculture and Forestry, and Chen Qimei, Director of Industry and Commerce are comrades of the Southern Revolutionary Party, and the North and the South are evenly divided. In the ensuing vote, all the candidates were passed smoothly except for the chief of transportation, Liang Ruhao, who was rejected because the number of votes was not more than half.As the candidate for the chief of transportation was rejected, Tang Shaoyi then nominated Tang Shouqian as the candidate for the chief, but was rejected by the provisional Senate again, and finally Tang Shaoyi assumed the post of chief of the transportation. On March 30, Yuan Shikai announced his appointment based on the resolution of the provisional Senate, and the first cabinet of the Republic of China organized by Tang Shaoyi was announced.Interestingly, during the process of peace talks between the North and the South and the formation of the cabinet in Nanjing, Tang Shaoyi had a lot of contacts with the southern revolutionaries, and the two sides had a common language, as if his early republican and democratic concepts were reawakened.On the night when the cabinet was established, Tang Shaoyi readily joined the Tongmenghui under the introduction of Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing.Therefore, Tang Shaoyi's current cabinet is also called "Tongmenghui cabinet". According to Tang Shaoyi's original intention, he probably wanted to use this to reconcile the contradictions between the North and the South so as to smoothly carry out the work of the cabinet; but in Yuan Shikai's view, Tang Shaoyi and the revolutionaries were too close and had a tendency to separate.As a result, Tang Shaoyi also planted the root of discord with Yuan Shikai.