The Constitutional Monarchy and Modernization: Kang Youwei’s Perspectives on “Keeping the Emperor and the Royal System in China”

Abstract

At the end of the 19th century, China opened up its age of democratic revolution. Kang Youwei, a senior intellectual, advised Emperor Guangxu to establish the Constitutional Monarchy system in China as England and Japan did. However, his thoughts were condemned as “conservative”, “anti-revolutionary” by those radicals in his time. In this article, the author makes a deep exploration of the Constitutional Monarchy system in different countries in today’s world, the social roles of kings and monarchs, and the economic positions of today’s Constitutional Monarchy countries in the world. It is found that nearly all these countries are developed countries which gained political stability and economic prosperity by establishing the constitutional monarchy system and account for a large percentage in the world’s most developed countries. Compared to those democratic republican countries of the same period, they developed in a more stable and rapid way. The kings and queens play important roles in keeping the country stable and prosperous. Thus, history has proven that the Constitutional Monarchy is a great democratic system and Kang Youwei’s proposal of “keeping the emperor and the royal system” and establishing the Constitutional Monarchy system was the most suitable choice in terms of the situation of China at his time.