ABSTRACT

After the Revolution of 1911, the famous intellectual Liang Qichao (1873–1929) quickly abandoned his support for constitutional monarchism and became a participant in the politics of the early republic. Liang was interested in the formal mechanisms of republicanism. He did not use the term “civil society,” and insofar as civil society is defined in terms of institutions or social group’s intermediary between the state and private life, it was of secondary concern to Liang. Roughly speaking, over his lifetime Liang’s political ideas moved through five phases: basic reform from 1895 to 1898; a more radical and democratic analysis from 1898 to about 1903; and then from the early 1900s to the 1911 Revolution disassociation from radicalism and a call for constitutional monarchism and even “enlightened despotism.” Indeed, with the revolution still fresh Liang was more confident of the rights of the people in 1912 than the rights of the state.