An archaeological study of knowledge of China's constitutional culture
A joint development of the history of constitutional concepts and the history of concepts
A work of "meta-discourse" for the study of the category of constitutional law in China
A beautiful landscape of Chinese constitutional law research
The famous jurist Professor Wang Renbo and his disciples
It revolves around eight core concepts in China's constitutional culture
The people, the republic, the constitution, the state, democracy, civil rights...
Comb through the complex transformation and transformation of ancient and modern in the West
Interpret and understand the Constitution by doing "stupid work."
Tracing the "Past Life" of the Core Concepts and Terms of the Chinese Constitution
The "Afterlife" of western constitutionalism showing "Sinicization"
Exploring the Complex "Lineage" of China's Constitutional Culture
"Foreign for Chinese Use: Archaeology of Chinese Legal and Political Knowledge" condenses the important results of Professor Wang Renbo and others' exploration of the conceptual history and conceptual history of the main concepts and terms of China's constitutional system. Taking the general pattern of China's entry into the world since the late Qing Dynasty as the context, this book discusses in detail the transformation and transformation of the main concepts and terms in the Chinese constitution, as well as the transformation and transformation of the chinese and Western ancient and modern times, as well as their complexity. When those foreign concepts and terms are translated and replaced into Chinese, the different forms between the original meaning (western) and the new meaning (middle) shape our constitutional text at the same time, but also shape our constitutional culture and constitutional scholarship.
——Cheng Liaoyuan, Professor of Chongqing University
We can't categorize our studies. To put it more broadly, is it "intellectual archaeology"? Specifically, is it a conceptual history or conceptual history study? It seems to be a little bit, but it is not very accurate. What we do know for sure is that the four authors of this book each did a little bit of stupid work in constitutional research.
—— Wang Renbo, Professor, China University of Political Science and Law
directory
Preface: Concepts and Terminology in the Chinese Constitution / Wang Renbo
On the Concept of the People in the Constitution / Yang Chen
"Republic" Examination / Liu Yiling
The Middle Chinese Realm of Constitutionalism / Wang Renbo
The Origin of the Concept of Constitutionalism and Its Rheology / Wang Renbo
"National body" word meaning examination / Wang Bencun
Victory of the common people
——An Examination of Chinese Democratic Discourse / Wang Renbo
Civil Rights Word Meaning Examination / Wang Renbo
The elliptical structure of Chinese modernity
——" The "Builder" in the "1982 Constitution" / Wang Renbo
Preface: Concepts and Terminology in the Chinese Constitution
Wang Renbo
One
This is a book on Chinese constitutional culture that I and three young people have done together.
We explored several key concepts that profoundly affected China's constitutional system and culture, such as the people, constitutionalism, democracy, civil rights, republicanism, and the state system. There are many paradigms and methods in the study of Chinese constitutionalism, and we have chosen to start with basic concepts. The choice of such an academic position is mainly based on the following considerations: the constitutional system and its historical evolution rely on ideas, and the establishment and replacement of a concept is closely related to the application of concepts. This is a conservative statement. Our original intention is that concepts precede institutions, and the application of concepts reflects the form and style of concepts. Changes in concepts depend on the emergence of new concepts, or the progression and addition of the meaning of the same concept. Concepts have their own origins, just as constitutionalism itself has its own historical process. Each concept encompasses the whole process of being born, growing, and dying (being replaced by another new concept). The emergence of a concept may be either "endogenous" or "foreign", and most of these concepts in Chinese constitutional culture are "foreign". This determines the complexity of their own "growth": they must wear Chinese clothes (language) and change themselves according to the needs of Chinese history and reality. The concept is still the original concept, but the fabric and lining of the clothes have all been changed, which is a rewrite of the implication. Concepts underpin the language of constitutionalism. It has both changed history and reshaped reality.
Two
As we all know, China's constitutional system originated in the "modern era" and is the product of China's "modern era" itself. The boundary marker is the year that has been talked about countless times, 1840. Before that, China's current situation was no longer good, and Chinese still had the confidence to rely on a self-reliant system and culture to deal with problems. After 1840, in the face of this "great change that has not occurred in three thousand years" (Li Hongzhang), Chinese rely on traditional wisdom and experience to deal with complex practical problems with increasing difficulties, and dealing with difficult times is always stretched and lacks effective ways. In the face of embarrassment, it is not too difficult for confucian bureaucratic intellectuals to put forward such a strategy as "mastering the art of mastering the art to control the yi" that has been used through the ages. These people can not only sing the high-key of the world, but also face the problems. "Learning" starts with easy things, just as a person's enlightenment starts with elementary school. In a sense, the formation of China's constitutional system and culture is the result of learning from the West (great powers). Learning begins with understanding the object of learning, their language, and the ideas and concepts organized by concepts and terms. This involves "translation" between two cultures. There is no understanding without translation, because it is unrealistic for everyone to read outside of their native language, and it is even more impossible to master the "profession" other than their own. Learning is a process from simple to complex, from superficial to in-depth.
Three
As early as the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, Catholic missionaries who came to China translated the religion and some scientific concepts and terms in Spanish into Chinese and introduced them to the Chinese. This strange knowledge, which first came from the West, was partially incorporated into the Qing Dynasty's Siku Quanshu.
In fact, this kind of knowledge did not arouse much interest among Chinese Confucian bureaucratic intellectuals—for a civilization that is intellectually and spiritually self-reliant—and it makes sense that it should be regarded as superfluous.
Since the beginning of the 19th century, Protestant Christian missionaries have continued to pour into China, and for their sacred missionary cause, they have devoted great enthusiasm to translating their own cultural products to Chinese, and for this purpose have compiled dictionaries-like foreign language reference books. Western natural sciences, as well as related basic political and geographical concepts, and terminology began to enter the Chinese system more systematically. By the 1860s, in order to promote the Western affairs movement of the Qing government, foreign language schools were also opened in China. Its teachers range from specially hired foreign language teachers to missionaries who are deeply familiar with Chinese and foreign languages. The latter's translation and introduction activities during this period were extremely active, and the remarkable change was that in addition to the large number of scientific and technological concepts and terms directly related to Fuqiang entering Chinese, its translation of political, legal systems and cultures also began to increase, and a large number of words related to this aspect entered the Chinese language. In 1864, the American missionary Ding Yunliang translated the "Public Law of Nations" ("Principles of International Law") as its symbol. These concepts and terms, which were translated into Chinese characters, were also transmitted to Japan at the same time, and systematically entered the Japanese language as a Vocabulary of Japanese Characters, finding a suitable language expression base for the modernization of Japan. In the 1890s, with China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, Japan's importance in Sino-Western relations became increasingly prominent. China sees Japan as a model of success in learning from the West, and Japan revels in its role. This brought about a twofold result: on the one hand, Japan no longer imported from China the political and legal Chinese character concepts and terms invented by missionaries, but began to create (translate) new concepts and new words of Chinese characters.
On the surface, because missionaries' translations are mostly taught by the missionaries themselves and then recorded by their Chinese assistants, it is usually criticized by Chinese Confucian bureaucrats for lacking the beauty of Chinese— "Yaxun" (the beauty of style); and at a deeper level, China has lost to Japan, which has always been looked down upon by itself, which indirectly shows that the missionaries' cause of disseminating new Western concepts and new knowledge in China has not been successful. On the other hand, for whatever reason, the Chinese scholar-bureaucrats also abandoned the missionary efforts: first, they accepted a large number of Kanji concepts and vocabulary from Japanese translations, and second, they began to translate them themselves. The latter focuses primarily on the social sciences, including constitutionalism and culture. Yan Fu is one of the outstanding examples. He not only translated Western social science works, created concepts and terms that are still used today, but also established the three principles of Chinese translation: faith, da, and ya.
Incidentally, A small matter of conceptual history research is mentioned here: many of the Chinese loanwords created by missionary translators were used by Chinese translators, such as Yan Fu, but also spread to Japan and were absorbed by the Japanese language. The question is, which of the Chinese concepts and terms Yan Fu uses are taken from missionaries and which are his own creations? Which Chinese loanwords that came from Japan to China were invented by Japan itself, and which were missionaries from China?
Making a fine distinction is not an easy task.
For example, the term freedom is generally considered to be Yan Fu's Chinese translation of the English liberty, but the existing literature shows that Yan Fu's use of the missionary translation; it is generally believed that the word "evolution" was created in Japan and transmitted to China, but Yan Fu used both the words "tianyan" and "evolution" when translating Huxley's "Theory of Heavenly Evolution" ("Evolution and Ethics"). "Tianyan" is a Chinese loanword invented by Yan Fu to the English evolution, emphasizing the characteristics of the natural process of evolution, while the Japanese translation is the "evolution" of Chinese characters; Yan Fu tends to translate the English civilization as "evolution", highlighting the human behavior, with the concept of progress. The distinction between these two translations– today – cannot be ignored.
Four
Researchers of the history of domestic ideas divide the changes in foreign words related to China's constitutional system and culture into three stages: from the Opium War to the end of the 1880s, it is regarded as the first stage, the main feature of which is that the Chinese intellectual bureaucracy is accustomed to understanding and grasping the constitutional concepts and terms from the West with its own Confucian knowledge and standards, such as the attitude towards the house, civil rights, democracy, rights, etc.; the second stage is roughly from the Sino-Japanese War to 1919, which is the Chinese intellectual bureaucracy In particular, the intellectuals outside the center of power try to understand and learn according to the inherent connotations of foreign concepts, terms, ideas, and principles; the third stage is based on 1919 (the beginning of modern Chinese history), when the Chinese intellectual class abandoned the way of "importing" loan words from Japan and truly began its own stage of creation, which included both its own translation and the "localization" work of digesting these foreign knowledge, forming China's own ideological and conceptual system.
It is not difficult to see that the basis of this division is not so much the history of ideas itself as the artificial division of the meaning of the concept itself according to the prevailing standards of history. The way we work is markedly different from the way we go from the "now" to the "past"; we benefit from the many places that these two researchers have studied, but our interests and conclusions and the way we seek them are not consistent.
Five
According to Edward Sapir, "language has a pedestal," which is race and culture. Language cannot exist "out of the totality of customs and beliefs that have been handed down from society and that determine the face of our lives." Even our knowledge of the natural world cannot avoid the cultural context of language, and the nationality of language and culture exists in a dialectical way from beginning to end. Language exists and is used in the cultural context, and cultural studies is essentially contextual studies. In this sense, the encounter between modern China and the West is the collision of two languages and two cultural contexts. China can only be understood by the West if it is placed in the cultural context of the West itself; the West must strip China from the Chinese square characters characterized by its national spirit and pull it into its own alphabet to grasp China; the meaning of China in its own language and culture is also reset and regenerated in the language and culture of the West, and the "China" in the West must be stained with the meaning of the alphabet.
In the same way, the process of learning the West in modern China is also to drag the language and culture organized by the Western alphabet from the original context and reset it to the context of Chinese culture and history. "Learning" is the transformation and generation of context. A successful experience is always inseparable from the historical experience of the subject, including spiritual, psychological, emotional, etc., and learning is to eliminate those things in the experience that cannot be copied, to implant the remaining part of the "teaching" into another process, and to become its own thing in a new context. Take the concepts of "constitutionalism" and "constitution" discussed in this book as an example: the Chinese concept of "constitutionalism" is translated from the English concept of conformalism. At the same time, it can also be translated into Chinese as "constitutional", "constitutional", "constitutional", etc. In this way, constitutionalism has established a certain equivalence relationship with the Chinese "constitutionalism", "constitutionalism (governance)" and "constitutionalism". In English, constitutionalism is closely related to the concept, which is translated as "constitution" in Chinese. (Yan Fu has always been dissatisfied with this translation from Japanese, but eventually used this Japanese translation) Whatever the significance of constitution in British history and culture, once it enters the Chinese language and cultural context, it cannot be cut off from the meaning of the Chinese characters "xian" (憲) and "law". Other concepts discussed in this book, such as the people, democracy, republicanism, and the state system, also have cultural mechanisms similar to "people" and "people", "people" and "lord", "communist" and "harmony", and "state" and "body". That is to say, no matter how hard the Chinese script as a translation language tries to maintain its original meaning in the source language, it cannot completely eliminate the meaning of the Chinese character attached to it. In this sense, constitution and "constitution" are not equivalent relations, but regenerative relations.
In connection with this, the difference between constitutionalism and the Chinese "constitutionalism" is also the difference in context. The former is a political form formed by historical and cultural changes through historical changes based on the concept of conformity. It is not only deeply embedded in the political culture of Britain, but also the result of the collision, compromise and mixing of various political and social factors in different historical periods. It is both derived from and distinct from the British tradition, and is a type of modernity politics with a limited nature. Once the conceptivism is transformed into the Chinese word "constitutionalism", it is detached from the original context, reset within the Chinese cultural language, and is indistinguishable with a certain desire of China's reality, with the significance of reform, reform, revolution, and rebirth, and contains the hope, goal and ideal of China becoming a modern country.
……
We can't categorize our studies. To put it more broadly, is it "intellectual archaeology"? Specifically, is it a conceptual history or conceptual history study? It seems to be a little bit, but it is not very accurate. What we do know for sure is that the four authors of this book each did a little bit of stupid work in constitutional research.
About the Author
Wang Renbo
Jurist, professor of China University of Political Science and Law, doctoral supervisor, enjoys special government allowances of the State Council. His representative works include "Amateurs Say", "Theory of rule of law" (1978-2014 influence on China's rule of law books), "TheOry of Rights", "Lonely Sensitive Person", "The Chineseness of Law" (recommended books of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in 2014, Top Ten Good Books of Phoenix Network in 2014, "Top Ten Rule of Law Books of Legal Daily" in 2014), "Modernity in China", "Look at Me and Say: The Human Taste of a Jurist", "China Since 1840", etc.
Wang Bencun
Professor of Chongqing University Law School, doctoral supervisor, doctor of law. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Law School of China University of Political Science and Law and a visiting scholar at Emory University Law School in the United States. His main research areas are constitutional law and administrative law. He has published several papers and one monograph in journals such as "Political Science and Law Forum" and "Modern Jurisprudence".
Yang Chen
Assistant Researcher, Academy of Science, East China University of Political Science and Law. Graduated from Tsinghua University Law School with a Ph.D.; He was engaged in postdoctoral research at East China University of Political Science and Law. His main research areas are constitutional law and legal philosophy. He has published more than ten papers in journals such as "Political Science Forum" and "Zhejiang Social Science", published and translated "Hegel's Critique of Liberalism", and presided over a project of the Ministry of Education.
Liu Yiling
Associate Professor of the Department of Law of Quanzhou Normal University, graduated from the Law School of China University of Political Science and Law with a doctorate. His main research areas are constitutional law and rule of law theory. He has published several papers in journals such as "Political Science and Law Forum" and "Southeast Academic".
Foreign for Chinese use: Archaeology of Chinese legal and political knowledge
Wang Renbo waited/ waited
This book is an important collection of essays by Professor Wang Renbo and his disciples to explore the history of concepts and concepts of the main concepts and terms of Chinese constitutionalism.
Since Foucault pioneered the archaeology of knowledge, the sorting out of concepts has become a "fresh" paradigm in academic research. As the benchmark for the paradigm of domestic legal science, especially the conceptual research of constitutional law, Professor Wang Renbo proposed to interpret and understand the Constitution through several keywords/core concepts in the Constitution, and became a pioneer of the domestic legal science, especially the constitutional law research paradigm. This research method can not only achieve the purpose of academic training through the method of conceptual interpretation, but also understand the meaning of the Constitution, and has both normative analysis, semantic construction and historical evidence, which has become a beautiful landscape in the study of Chinese constitutional law.
Taking the general pattern of China's entry into the world since the late Qing Dynasty as the context, this book conducts a nuanced conceptual history and conceptual history of eight words in the Constitution, such as the people, the republic, the constitution, the state system, democracy, and civil rights, and discusses in detail the transformation, transformation and complexity of the ancient and modern times in the West and the West, vividly showing that the concepts and terms of the constitution shape our constitutional texts at the same time, but also shape our constitutional culture and constitutional scholarship.