On December, 10, 2008 when the year was coming to a close, Chinese focused world attention on its manifesto. The manifesto named ‘Charter 08’ called for political democratization and suggested fulfilling the dream that Chinese had patiently cherished for more than one hundred years, the foundation of a country of liberty, democracy and constitutionalism, resulting from a great revolution of Chinese society.
The charter, composed of 6 articles and 19 articles stipulating basic ideas and basic advocacies respectively, aimed at realizing republicanism, a goal of the XINHAI Revolution, in the China of today.
After making an introspective review of the modernization process over the last 100 years, the signatories came up with 6 ideas, liberty, human rights, equality, republicanism, democracy and constitutionalism.
Republicanism was elaborated on in 6 articles, but basically, such discussions did not get much beyond the Provisional Constitutional System established right after the XINHAI Revolution. Their republicanism might be defined as ‘大家共治, 和平共生’, and their opinions were nothing new except guarded objection to the political monopoly of the CCP. However, their opinions were suppressed by a political discussion that the Chinese political system should be appropriate for China and Chinese politics should be characterized by China. The characteristics of China mentioned herein were not determined through discussion and agreement but by the hegemony of a specific party.
It has recently been 100 years since the XINHAI Revolution broke out. A scholar who had led the Chinese historical society sets a high value on the XINHAI Revolution, saying “China underwent three significant changes during its 100-year history. The first was the XINHAI Revolution, the second was the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, and the third was the reform and opening-up policy.”Nevertheless, he conformed to Sun Wen’s world view, ‘世界潮流 浩浩蕩蕩 順之則昌 逆之則亡.’However, any historians had not reviewed the historicity of republicanism in which universal democracy would be realized as young revolutionaries had dreamed of at the beginning of a republic. Therefore, the ideal of a real republic is regarded as future, and moreover, a dream about republicanism has been still remembered gloomily in the history.
After the Opium War, continental China could not implement a stable political process to derive social agreements institutionally. Both the KMD and the CCP labeled the democratic basic order as the anarchistic disorder, and hided a fear of it behind national salvation based on patriotism. In addition, the utopian ideals were used as a tool to cover the limitations of realistic politics. As the case stands, it is difficult for labor unions to lead their activities even in the People’s Republic of China that poses as a socialist state. Furthermore, corruption has been infested and there has been an unbridgeable gap between the rich and poor. Again, the cast system has been emerged as a national issue. So far, Confucianism has been denied with feudal moralism, but nowadays it has been revived again, and also morality and ethics,defined by the party, began to resurrect under the name of ‘revolutionary morals.’Now, the CCP’s utopian ideals are colored with the illegitimate theory called ‘socialistic market economy system’, which accelerates the anarchistic crisis and increases the need for procedural democracy regarding the republic