6
Chinese constitutional dynamics
A decennial review
Wang Zhenmin and Tu Kai
i. introduction
China has reached several milestones in its pursuit of mature constitutionalism
in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but its position remains distant from
the terminus.^1
On 10 October 1911 , a mutiny triggered a republican revolution that overthrew
the last imperial dynasty of China. The revolutionaries devoted their lives to an
ideal constitutional republic and, at that time, little did they realise that their
sacrifices marked only the beginning of what would become China’s century-
long quest for constitutionalism. In the early decades of the last century, China
promulgated several constitutions, yet most of them were shelved after a short time.
Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 , China
has promulgated four constitutions, in 1954 , 1975 , 1978 and 1982. Four eras of
the regime can be seen in the codes: the 1954 constitution was drafted by the
Communist Party of China (CPC) and its political allies who had supported the
CPC in the civil war against the Kuomintang (KMT); the 1975 constitution is a
leftist text made under the ideological climate of the Cultural Revolution ( 1966 –
(^1) See, e.g., Barrett McCormick,Political Reform in Post-Mao China: Democracy and
Bureaucracy in a Leninist State(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990 ). Albert
Chen,An Introduction to the Legal System of the People’s Republic of China(Hong Kong:
Butterworths Asia, 1992 ). Stanley Lubman,Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China after
Mao(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999 ). Feng Lin,Constitutional Law in China
(Hong Kong: Sweet & Maxwell Asia, 2000 ). Karen Turner-Gottschang et al.,The Limits of
the Rule of Law in China(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000 ). Keyuan Zou,
China’s Legal Reform: Towards the Rule of Law(Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,
2006 ). Andre ́Laliberte ́and Marc Lanteigne (eds.),The Chinese Party-State in the 21 st
Century: Adaptation and the Reinvention of Legitimacy(Oxford: Routledge, 2008 ). Donald
Clarke (ed.),China’s Legal System: New Developments, New Challenges(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008 ).