Recommendation to A Yuan-he^* Constitutional Transformation

   Yang Jian-Li

Shortly after the opening edition of Yibao (China E-Weekly) was distributed, I received a mail from Mr. Mu Chuanheng, a key leader of the Bujieshe (No-Association) Association based in Shandong, China. In addition to his high remarks and expectations to China E-Weekly, Mr. Mu also sent us a copy of his work titled A Yuan-he Constitutional Transformation, an important document with some thirty thousand Chinese words that took him two years to finish.  This is a powerful work yet to be published.  It proposes a comprehensive structure for China's future, including principal guidelines for a Chinese constitution, forms of government and state, ways and means to a democracy, among many other things.  It is a crystallization of the thoughts of the author and his friends in about ten years in an extremely harsh political environment. Although there, in the document, exist some statements and conclusions on constitutional democracy that seem to lack theoretic and philosophic elaboration, the principles and actual societal system designs the author propose and uphold are all vitally important for those Chinese who advocate transformation to a constitutional democracy in China.  These principles and designs are derived from what he called the Yuan-he Values in a New Civilization, which consist a set of ideas such as respect to nature, humanism, mutual compromise, all people's reconciliation, universal democracy, people's sovereignty, win for all and so forth.  In both theory and practice, this document appears to have its unique value; therefore we will publish it in eight installments with the hope to heat up discussions among our readers.

At this moment, however, I have to tell my readers, with great sadness, that Mr. Mu was arrested two weeks ago under the charge of "subversion of government".  I hope the readers will show solicitude for Mr. Mu and his fate.  He is such a moderate and mild Chinese intellectual but is still persecuted brutally.  This shows us that personal integrity and independent thinking are still severely suppressed in today's China.  Each and every act like this by the government is creating one more trouble for an all people's reconciliation that Mr. Mu promotes and setting up one more hurdle on the way to a constitutional democracy in China.

There is one more thing I would like to share with the readers.  Recently, three college students in Qingdao sued the Ministry of Education for its violation of Chinese constitution because the ministry has long been requiring different college admission scores in different regions of China.  They say this is a gross violation of people's constitutional equal rights to education.  I cheer for these students' action, which is challenging us for new means of promoting a constitutional rule in China.  For example, we have to ask where and what is the mechanism for supervision on violations to the current Chinese constitution?  How can we act in such a mechanism?  In addition, this incident will also inspire us to think about people's behavior in a future constitutional structure.  It will include things such as public education, regional autonomy, federation relations, roles of taxation for the central and local governments, citizens' taxes and rights, affirmative actions, and so on.  Even more importantly, from the three students we can learn to constantly evaluate our own interests by checking relevant government agencies to see how much they have violated our rights and constitution and take actions accordingly.  There is no doubt that these three students will face a lot of difficulties and even dangers for what they are doing.  In fact, they might have touched some extremely unreasonable items in the current Chinese constitution and laws.  Nevertheless, the more we all take similar actions as theirs, the more likely the calls for a constitutional transformation will become a trend.  Of course, what we should do the most at this time is to pay close attention to the fate of these young college students, to try our best to protect their room of action and to find new opportunities for a peaceful transformation to a constitutional rule in China.

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* The Chinese term Yuan-he can be translated into English as harmonic and peaceful. The original meaning of Yuan is circular, which can mean smooth and harmonic in the context of human relations.  The word He can mean peace, reconciliation, harmony, etc.