ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the two concepts of constitution and constitutionalism in both Western and Chinese contexts respectively. In 1990's the Chinese constitutional scholars were focusing on translating/introducing Western constitutional works and sorting out the constitutional history of China in the past century, with little work dedicated to analyzing constitutionalism in contemporary China. The four ways for approaching the topic of constitutionalism in present-day China, namely through the "judicial power" perspective, "political jurisprudence" perspective, "popular constitutionalism" perspective, and "envisioning the state" perspective. The "political jurisprudence" perspective seeks to understand China's emerging constitutionalism by focusing on its political feature, which relates constitutionalism to democracy. The author's conceptual framework for understanding constitutionalism in China goes beyond the perspectives and seeks to combine Larry ideological framework, which regards constitutionalism as a weltanschauung containing within it its own ontology, explanations, objectives, methodology, epistemology, and etiology, and the critical legal theorist Scott constitutionalism sub specie Spinozae, while incorporating the insights of the analytical lens.
