Chinese Constituent Assembly election, 1948

The Chinese Constituent Assembly election, 1948 was held on December 3-5, pursuant to the Common Program of the United Front adopted by the 1947 Political Consultative Conference. They were repeatedly delayed as provincial apportionment was determined by the results of the First National Census for the Republic of China, which had yet to be completed until the autumn of that year. 632 seats were contested, with 570 Prefectures receiving one Constituent Assembly member elected by First Past the Post and 12 Direct-controlled Municipalities electing multiple members by Party Block Vote (PBV).

All Chinese citizens at or over twenty years of age could vote. The parties officially contesting the election were the Chinese Nationalist Party or the Kuomintang (KMT), the Chinese Youth Party (CYP), the Communist Party of China (CCP), the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party (CPWDP) and the China Democratic League (CDL). The KMT and the CYP shared a ballot line, as did the CCP and the CPWDP.

Campaigns of the Major Parties

Kuomintang and the Chinese Youth Party

The Kuomintang primarily presented themselves as adaptable, fair-minded technocrats who nonetheless respected traditional Confucian values. They emphasized their unique continuity with the founding of the country as the party of Sun Yat-sen, whose son Sun Fo served as the Director-General of the party at the time of the elections. This dovetailed nicely with their other campaign message that as the incumbent party for decades, they could be trusted with power with their proven record of successes, such as the Three Reforms. The dangers of the CCP winning the election, or the CDL, whom they portrayed as likely puppets or collaborators, were just too great for any thinking person to risk.

The Chinese Youth Party (CYP), was a stridently right-wing former member of the China Democratic League that shared its commitment to multi-party democracy and participated in the RCCP. They had strong regional connections in Sichuan and had early worked with the KMT during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Zuo Shunsheng, Chairman of the CYP, again cooperated with the KMT to oppose the CDL because of the latter's allegedly soft stance on the Communists. The CYP tried its best to link the Chinese Communist Party with the USSR while allowing the KMT to keep its options open. They argued that the CCP would forsake the people and the nation for their assistance, repeating the atrocities that occurred during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria by throwing open their borders to the Red Army.

Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party

The Chinese Communist Party under Chairman Mao Zedong engaged in an aggressive propaganda drive in an attempt to discredit the KMT, although they did little to attack the CDL as a whole despite occasionally trading barbs. The Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party (CPWDP) joined the CCP party list after breaking away from the China Democratic League, as their Chairman Zhang Bojun argued for a policy of radical land reform and capital confiscation that would nonetheless be pursued by a fairly and freely elected government. They opted to share a party list with the CCP to avoid competing with them as an individual party, and had repeatedly urged the China Democratic League to do the same.

The CCP meanwhile portrayed the KMT as feudal and reactionary butchers and oppresses of the Chinese people whose rule had brought economic ruin and instability. However, under Communist rule, the peasants would own their land and the proletariat the means of production, which would bring freedom and prosperity to the entire nation. Many of the images and slogans from the Chinese Civil War were reused for the purposes of the election. These talking points would've likely been more appealing during the turmoil of the previous years, but by 1948 the economy had improved drastically and (moderate) land reform was already being implemented.

The CCP was also caught between international and national politics. While the Democratic League was writing articles like “Why is the Red Army in Port Arthur” and “Why did the Soviet Union carry off machines from Manchuria?”, a rift occurred between Josip Tito and Joseph Stalin in June 1948. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia hailed Mao as the “Second Tito”, and stated that their amicable relations with Moscow were a cunning ruse.

Between September and November 1948, the CCP praised the Soviet Union as a peace-loving democratic and socialist state working hard against bellicose American imperialism. Mao meanwhile made attempts to meet with Stalin, only to be rebuffed repeatedly. The USSR feared that their territorial gains in the region from Yalta onward would be jeopardized if they showed exclusive support for what the Communist Party of the Soviet Union assessed to be unsuccessful guerrillas. The Soviet leadership further did not want to draw themselves into a war with the United States in China, and thus declined to provide military aid for the Communists even after the U.S. began to train ROC divisions. However, they obliquely threatened the KMT with these possibilities repeatedly as a bargaining chip in the secret negotiations for the Nanjing Protocols.

China Democratic League

Unlike the KMT or the CCP, the China Democratic League had no unified campaign strategy because they were a coalition of multiple parties and interest groups, and its Chairman Zhang Lan from Sichuan was selected primarily because he was nonpartisan. This constellation of intellectuals and reformers were united only in a Third Way between the other major parties, a commitment to true democracy which sanctified popular sovereignty and the rights of the people to directly electing and recalling their representatives, as well as greater regional autonomy. The three parties committing themselves to these principles were the China Democratic Socialist Party, the Rural Reconstruction Party and the China Democratic National Construction Association.

The China Democratic Socialist Party (CDSP) was primarily headed by the social democratic neo-Confucian philosopher and scholar Zhang Junmai. He argued on behalf of his party that democracy was threatened by partisan, class or military dictatorship controlling education, the judiciary or civil service, and that the human rights of freedom of speech and association could only be assured through the self-cultivation of the Chinese people, who would usher in a New Culture to revive the Chinese national spirit and realize it in the state. Equal rights for women, a robust social welfare system, and a peaceful international outlook would be the foundations for a modern China.

The Rural Reconstruction Party capitalized on their leader Y.C. James Yen's position as Vice Chairman of the Commission on Rural Reconstruction, who took credit for securing additional funding from the United States and authoring many of its programs. Liang Shuming, a philosopher and leader of the party who worked closely with Y.C. James Yen in the Commission, championed the community unity achieved through its rural research institutions and called for the creation of such in every province.

Finally, the China Democratic National Construction Association called for the establishment of vocational schools throughout the country. It was led by industrialist Huang Yanpei, who wrote a book about his travels with Zhang Bojun to see Mao Zedong in 1945 before embarking on a similar expedition to negotiate the June 23rd Armistice. Huang Yanpei argued on behalf of the entire China Democratic League that the KMT and the CCP were too antagonistic towards each other, and that the CDL were the careful mediators needed to maintain the peace in the constituent assembly.

Results

The Kuomintang achieved a majority in the popular vote that allowed it to secure a two-thirds majority of the Chinese Constituent Assembly, the necessary threshold to pass constitutional articles according to the 1947 PCC. Despite receiving over eleven million more votes, the China Democratic League received less seats than the Chinese Communist Party. The electoral system is partly to blame for this, as the KMT was first place in most of the constituencies, while the CDL usually came in second and the CCP a distant third. However, in the electoral districts of the Northern Armistice Area, the CCP came out on top by overwhelming margins with the CDL as the only other party that received similar support. Electoral observers from all parties reported no major irregularities in the casting and counting of the ballots as they occurred.

Approval of the Constitution and Amendments

On December 25th 1948, the Kuomintang, the Chinese Youth Party, the China Democratic League and the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party were seated in the National Great Hall in Nanjing, unanimously convening the Chinese Constituent Assembly. KMT Director-General Sun Fo was elected President of the Constituent Assembly. The Constitution of the Republic of China drafted by the first Constituent Assembly on Christmas in 1947 was ratified, with the Additional Articles insisted upon by the other parties.

Article 1 of these Additional Articles provided freedom of assembly, explicitly including the right of workers to strike. Article 2 prohibited the banning of any political parties and the implementation of one-party rule even during periods of martial law. Article 3 protected the rights of all nationalities to preserve and use their languages whether spoken or written. Article 4 clarified that Outer Mongolia could not send representatives as stated in other constitutional provisions without ratification of the Constitution.

Articles 5 made it so a two-thirds majority with a three-fourths quorum was required for passing constitutional amendments in the National Assembly. Articles 6 through 12 pertained to administrative divisions, electoral law and the census:

The 570 Prefectures and 12 Direct-controlled Municipalities approved in the second session of the 1947 Political Consultative Assembly were enshrined as permanent administrative divisions for the Republic of China. The electoral system was also similar to that of the Chinese Constituent Assembly, with Members of the Legislative Yuan directly elected on the basis of First Past the Post (FPTP) from Prefectures and Single Nontransferable Vote (SNTV) from the Municipalities. Prefectures were drawn with nearly equal populations by the first census, but the constitution has no explicit mechanism for creating new Prefectures or Direct-controlled Municipalities, nor changing their boundaries.

This is because there are two votes for the Legislative Yuan: one for an individual Member elected from the Prefecture or the Municipality, and the other for Additional Members to be elected by the nation. There is one Additional Member for every additional 1,000,000 people since the first national census. Parties which have received no Members are not entitled to Additional Members, but the seat allocation is otherwise proportional to votes cast.

For the National Assembly, candidates are elected from the entire Province, which receive one Delegate for every 500,000 residents. Voters can choose a specific candidate or select a party list. After the election concludes and the candidate results are known, party list votes are then distributed by the party leadership to their individual candidates on the ballot in order to secure the most seats.

The first Legislative Yuan and National Assembly elections were to be held on 1950, and as stipulated elsewhere in the constitution, with elections occurring thereafter every three years for the Legislative Yuan and every six years for the National Assembly. This ensured the National Assembly would always be elected at the same time as the Legislative Yuan in a sexennial general election. Finally, the National Census of the Republic of China was to take place every decade after at least one general election. Seven have been conducted since the approval of the Constitution in the years 1954, 1964, 1972, 1982, 1990, 2000, and 2010.

Chinese Communist Party boycotts the Constituent Assembly

The CCP under Chairman Mao Zedong refused to take their seats in the Chinese Constituent Assembly, and argued after the elections that the results had been falsified. The Communist electoral observers were ousted from the party and condemned for allegedly working with the KMT conspiracy against the peasants and the workers of China. The CCP expected the Revolutionary Committee for Constitutional Protection and the China Democratic League to join them, but instead they ardently supported the election results and condemned Mao for participating in these elections as well as the preceding 1947 PCC in bad faith. The Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party further broke from the CCP to participate in the Constituent Assembly.

The People's Liberation Army commissars to the National Salvation Volunteer Army in Nanjing were recalled to the Northern Armistice Area, while the RCCP dissolved itself on January 1st 1949, when the Chinese People's Central Bank (CPCB) officially became an organ of the ROC government and the Constituent Assembly passed its first budget. The PLA would launch its 1949 Winter Offensive on February 9th abrogating the terms of the June 23rd Armistice and the 1947 Political Consultative Conference.