The main aim of the paper is to analyze the ground-breaking imperial edict issued in the Middle Kingdom in 1906, which introduced a packed of reform aimed to establish a constitutional monarchy. The edict is an important part of the process of selective adaptation of not only certain Western institutions, but also the fundamental principles relating to the core organization of the polity. This process was neither mechanical nor one-dimensional. "Translation" of the Western objects was involved in a number of dilemmas and challenges (the relationship between the tradition of the "new"; instrumentality or autotelicity of copying foreign institutions; selection of native counterparts of the copied objects). The main theoretical perspective employed in the paper is the “legal transplant” theory. It enables to point out a broader set of conclusions about the process of copying foreign laws and institutions basing on particular example - China at the beginning of the XX century.