The Greatest Defects of the
Draft Provincial Constitution

(April 25-26, 1921)

What are the greatest defects of the draft Provincial Constitution? Let us now
discuss them in the order of the articles. The first and greatest defect is that the
rights of the people are not sufficiently defined. In my opinion, the following three
extremely important articles must absolutely be added to the Provincial Constitution.

(1) All the people, regardless of gender, have the right to inherit their
relatives' property.
If, however, the relative wishes to give part or all of the property to the cause
of public welfare, that right should not be restricted by this article.

(2) All the people have the right freely to decide on their own marriages.
With the sole exception of the legally defined marriageable age, the freedom
of marriage is not to be restricted by parents or anyone else.
Divorce among the people is not to be restricted except in accordance with
legal provisions.

(3) All the people have the right to seek legitimate occupations in accordance
with their own free will.
All occupations not detrimental to the peace and happiness of society, such as
education, agriculture, industry, commerce, journalism, lawyer, doctor, writer,
and artist are legitimate occupations.

Of the above three articles, the first aims to remove the disadvantage of
women having no property. If women have no property, then attempts by women
to solve problems such as those of education, occupation, participation in politics, and marriage are nothing but empty talk. Property is the root; education,
occupation, marriage, and so on are all branches and leaves. Those in the
Women's Association¹ who attack not the root, but rather the branches and

This proposal originally appeared in the Changsha Dagongbao on April 25-26, 1921. Our
source is the text as reproduced in Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 2, pp. 15-17.

1. The Hunan Women's Association was formally established in February 1921. It
began what became known as the "five-proposal movement," proposing equal rights for
women with regard to property inheritance, voting and right to hold office, education,
occupation, and self-determination in marriage. The association was successful in December 1921 in obtaining provision for women's suffrage and personal freedom in the Hunan
Provincial Constitution.


leaves, are indeed mistaken in their view. This article for changing the Chinese
inheritance system will have very great influence, and must therefore be laid
down in the constitution. As for the second article, in China sons and daughters
have no right to determine their own marriage. Creating disaster in the family,
this does further harm to society as well; the roots of evil in many different
domains lie here. That sons and daughters should have the right to determine
their own marriage has, moreover, been accepted as a universal truth. While
fixing the marriageable age of men and women, and a minimal requirement for
divorce (such as bilateral consent) should be left to the civil law, the transfer of
the right of betrothal from the fathers and mothers to their sons and daughters is
a major element in changing the marriage system of our country, and should
therefore be laid down in the constitution. I think this is truly important. The
third article is especially important. At present, there are so very many jobless
and unemployed people. It is truly preposterous that the constitution has not
provided any means to solve such a momentous social problem. Here it is stipulated that the people have the right freely to seek a legitimate occupation, thus
providing constitutional protection for the people's "right of existence" by having it defined in the constitution. In my view, this is of a higher order of importance than defining "the freedom of the person." Immediately afterward, what is
meant by legitimate occupation is also defined. In this way, politics in the future
may become a kind of politics of the legitimately employed, not the idlers'
politics² it is now.

The first great defect of the Provincial Constitution has been set forth
above. What, then, is its second greatest defect? It is that people who do not
have any legitimate occupation also have the right to be elected to office, and
that there is no stipulation whatever about issues relating to labor. That a
general election is not sufficient to solve social problems has been made
known to us through concrete examples in the advanced countries of Europe
and America. Now if we move one step backward and allow people who do
not have any legitimate occupation the right to vote, then the right to be
elected can by no means be unrestricted. Note that formerly restrictions were
based on property, and now the restrictions are to be based on occupation.
Those who own property may perhaps find themselves among those who are
restricted; I call this reverse restriction. If we do not have occupational restrictions on the assemblymen, then once again only rich people will in fact
be elected, and poor people will lose out. If the society of idlers has parliamentary representatives, and the society of the legitimately employed does

2. Youmin zhengzhi. For the most part, in this edition we have translated youmin as
"vagrants." Here, however, where Mao is placing primary emphasis on the fact that these
people have no "legitimate occupation" rather than on their low class status, "idlers"
seems more appropriate.