Chapter VII. The Programs of Min Shêng.
The Three Programs of Min Shêng.
The new ideology of Sun Yat-sen, as has been shown, demanded three fulfilments of the doctrine of min shêng: a nationalistic economic revolution, a deliberate industrial revolution, and a social revolution. The last was to be accomplished negatively rather than positively. It was to aim at the reconstruction of the Chinese economy in such a manner as to avoid the necessity of class war. Since Chinese society was to be revolutionized by the development of a nation and a state, with all that that implied, and was to be changed by a transition from a handicraft economy to an industrial one, Sun Yat-sen hoped that these changes would permit the social revolution to develop at the same time as the others, and did not plan for it separately and distinctly. The three revolutions, all of them economic, were to develop simultaneously, and all together were to form a third of the process of readjustment.
In considering the actual plans for carrying out the min shêng principle, the student encounters difficulties. The general philosophical position of the min shêng ideology in relation to the ideologies of nationalism and democracy, and in connection with such foreign philosophies as capitalism and Marxism, has already been set forth. The direct plans that Sun Yat-sen had for the industrial revolution in China are also clear, since he outlined them, laboriously although tentatively, in The International Development of China;[295] but whereas the ideology and [pg 237] the actual physical blueprints can be understood clearly enough, the general lines of practical governmental policy with regard to economic matters have not been formulated in such a way as to make them indisputable.
Sun Yat-sen was averse to tying the hands of his followers and successors with respect to economic policy. He said: “While there are many undertakings which can be conducted by the State with advantage, others cannot be conducted effectively except under competition. I have no hard-and-fast dogma. Much must be left to the lessons of experience.”[296]
It would be inexpedient to go into details about railway lines and other modern industrial enterprises by means of which Sun sought to modernize China. On the other hand, it would be a waste of time merely to repeat the main economic theses of the new ideology. Accordingly, the examination of the program of min shêng will be restricted to the consideration of those features that affected [pg 238] the state, either directly or indirectly, or which had an important bearing upon the proposed future social organization of the Chinese. Among the topics to be discussed are the political nature of the national economic revolution, the political effect of the industrial revolution upon the Chinese, and the expediency of Sun's plans for that revolution; the nature of the social revolution which was to accompany these two first, especially with reference to the problem of land, the problem of capital, and the problem of the class struggle; the sphere of state action in the new economy; and the nature of that ideal economy which would be realized when the Chinese should have carried to completion the programs of min shêng. Railway maps and other designs of Sun, which have proved such an inspiration in the modernization of China and which represent a pioneer attempt in state planning, will have to be left to the consideration of the economists and the geographers.[297]
The program of min shêng was vitally important to the realization of the Nationalist revolution as a whole, so important, indeed, that Sun Yat-sen put it first in one of his plans: