The Evolution of China's Dual Constitution and Societal Militarisation

Abstract

This research aims to provide a war-oriented narrative of constitutional changes in the People's Republic of China (China) by contrast with the mainstream legal-political approach to constitutional changes. This research proposes that China's constitutional change is primarily driven by changing security demands and military strategies of the People's Liberation Army and Chinese Communist Party in response to changing forms of warfare with Western democracies. China's constitutional change and the associated repressive or liberal institutionalisation is a strategic adaptation to the military events and security policies in both domestic and global contexts. To prove these propositions, this research adapts an evolutionary approach, distinguishing the consistent norms from the inconsistent norms in China's constitutional changes. In light of these distinctions, China's constitution has evolved from a militarised constitution with high societal militarisation, through a constitutional liberalisation with relative societal demilitarisation, to a constitutional retrenchment with increased societal remilitarisation. This research finds that China's constitutional arrangement and the like-minded authoritarian regimes in the 21st century still follow the 19th century logic of Imperialist War. This is, the civilian sector could be autonomous from military rules for economic development and military finance, and seamlessly turn to be militarised for consolidating a garrison state when inter-state conflicts became military. Constitution in this sense serves as a political technology to produce soldier-citizens, and the security of constitutional order rests on the efficient mobilisation of domestic population and social resources in both state-building and military modernisation. This research concludes that China's militarised consequence of constitutional change originates from the historical reliance on popular sovereignty to realise constitutional and state formation. To insulate against the militarised consequence, China must give up the 19th century regime legitimacy expressed in exercising popular sovereignty through the transnational reach of state capacity, and creatively renovate Chinese regime legitimacy expressed in a legal form. This legal form includes but is not limited to the consistent civil-military separation written in the nation-state constitution and reflected in security policies, as well as any regional security or human rights constitution for regional demilitarisation.

Date of Award	6 Jan 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	John Haskell (Supervisor) & Christopher Thornhill (Supervisor)