The program of industrial revolution was planned by Sun Yat-sen with great care. The same belief which led him to urge the social revolution also guided him in his plans for the industrial revolutionizing of the Chinese economy, namely, his belief that China could profit by the example of the West, that what the West had done wastefully and circuitously could be done by the Chinese deliberately and straightforwardly. He proposed that the change from the old economy to the new be according to a well thought out plan. “However, China must develop her industries by all means. Shall we follow the old path of western civilization? This old path resembles the sea route of Columbus' first trip to America. He set out from Europe by a southwesterly direction through the Canary Islands to San Salvador, in the Bahama group. But nowadays [pg 245] navigators take a different direction to America and find that the destination can be reached by a distance many times shorter. The path of Western civilization was an unknown one and those who went before groped in the dark as Columbus did on his first voyage to America. As a late comer, China can greatly profit in covering the space by following the direction already charted by western pioneers.”306 By calling in the help of friends who were familiar with engineering and by using his own very extensive knowledge of Chinese economic potentialities, Sun Yat-sen drafted a broad long-range plan by means of which China would be able to set forth on such a charted course in her industrial revolution. This plan, offered tentatively, was called The International Development of China in the English and The Outline of Material Reconstruction in the Chinese version, both of which Sun himself wrote.

This outline was originally prepared as a vast plan which could be financed by the great powers, who would thereby find markets for their glut of goods left over by the war. The loan was to be made on terms not unprofitable to the financial powers, but nevertheless equitable to the Chinese. Sun Yat-sen hoped that with these funds the Chinese state could make a venture into state socialism. It was possible, in his opinion, to launch a coÖperative modern economy in China with the assistance of international capitalism, if the capital employed were to be remunerated with attractive rates of interest, and if the plan were so designed as to allow for its being financially worthwhile. He stated:

He was not oblivious to the necessity of making each detail of his plan one which would not involve the tying-up of unproductive capital, and did not propose to use capital advanced for the purposes of the industrial revolution for the sake of military or political advantage.

This may be shown in a concrete instance. He spoke of his Great Northeastern railway system as a scheme which might not seem economically attractive, and then pointed out that, as between a railway system running between densely-populated areas, the latter would be infinitely the more preferable. But, said he, “... a railway between a densely populated country and a sparsely settled country will pay far better than one that runs end to end in a densely populated land.”308

Even though he came to despair of having this scheme for the development of China carried out by international financial action, the expediency of his plans remained. He sought the fulfillment of this outline throughout his life; it has remained as a part of his legacy, challenging the Chinese people by the grandeur of its conception and the precision of its details.

It is a work which cannot easily be summarized in a discussion of political doctrines. Fully comparable in grandeur to the Russian Piatiletka, it provides for a complete communication system including all types of transport, the development of great ports, colonization and reclamation projects, and the growth of vast industrial areas comparable to the Donbas or the Kuzbas. The plan, while sound as a whole and not inexpedient in detail, is not marked by that irregularity of proportion which marks [pg 247] planning under capitalism; although not as fully worked out as the later Russian projects, Sun's plan, in 1922, was considerably more advanced than any Russian plan of that time. Sun shared with Lenin a passionate conviction of the inevitable necessity of industrialization; but while Lenin saw in industrialism the strengthening of that revolutionary bulwark, the proletariat, Sun believed in industrialism as a benefit to the whole nation.

This plan is the obvious fruit of Sun's advocacy of the adoption of the Western physical sciences. Here there is little trace of his ideological consistency with the old premises of Chinese society. He does not challenge them, but he does present a concrete plan which refers only incidentally to the political or the ideological. It is heavy with the details of industrial revolution. Sun Yat-sen's enthusiasm shows clearly through the pages of this work; he wrote it at a time when his health was still comparatively good, and when he was not harassed by the almost explosive dynamics of the situation such as that in which he delivered the sixteen lectures on the San Min Chu I. Here the practical aspects of his thinking show forth, his willingness to consider and debate, the profound and quiet enthusiasm for concrete projects which animated him and which was so infectious among his followers.

It were, of course, unfeasable to attempt any detailed description and assessment of the plan.309 The great amount of point by point elaboration worked over by Sun Yat-sen in order to make his plan appealing precludes the consideration of any one project in detail as a sample. Failing this, the magnitude of the plan may be gauged by a recapitulation of the chief points in each of his programs. [pg 248] It must be remembered, however, that each one of these subheads might necessitate hundreds of millions of dollars for execution, involving the building of several industrial cities or the reconstruction of a whole industry throughout the country. The printing industry, for example, not even mentioned in the general outline given below, was discussed as follows:

With this comment on printing as a small sample of the extent of each minor project in the plans, let us observe Sun's own summary:

The industrial revolution is to min shÊng what the present program of socialist construction is to the Marxians of the Soviet Union, what prosperity is to American democracy. Without industrialization min shÊng must remain an academic theory. Sun's program gives a definite physical gauge by means of which the success of his followers can be told, and the extent of China's progress estimated. It provides a material foundation to the social and political changes in China.

The theory of Sun Yat-sen in connection with the continuation of the old system is a significant one. His political doctrines, both ideological and programmatic, are original and not without great meaning in the development of an adequate and just state system in modern China. But this work might have been done, although perhaps not as well, by other leaders. The significance of Sun in his own lifetime lay in his deliberate championing [pg 251] of the cause of industrial revolution as the sine qua non of development in China. In the epoch of the first Republic he relinquished the Presidency in favor of YÜan Shih-k'ai in order to be able to devote his whole time to the advancement of the railway program of the Republic. In the years that he had to spend in exile, he constantly studied and preached the necessity of modernizing China. Of his slogan, “Modernization without Westernization!” modernization is the industrial revolution, and non-Westernization the rest of his programs and ideology. The unity of Sun Yat-sen's doctrines is apparent; they are inseparable; but if one part were to be plucked forth as his greatest contribution to the working politics of his own time, it might conceivably be his activities and plans for the industrial revolution.

He spoke feelingly and bitterly of the miserable lives which the vast majority of his countrymen had to lead, of the expensiveness and insecurity of their material existences, of the vast, tragic waste of human effort in the form of man-power in a world where machine-power had rendered muscular work unnecessary. “This miserable condition among the Chinese proletariat [he apparently means the whole working class] is due to the non-development of the country, the crude methods of production, and the wastefulness of labor. The radical cure for all this is industrial development by foreign capital and experts for the benefit of the whole nation.... If foreign capital cannot be gotten, we will have to get at least their experts and inventors to make for us our own machinery....”312 Howsoever the work was to be done, it had to be done. In bringing China into the modern world, in modernizing her economy, in assuring the justice of the new economy which was to emerge, Sun found the key in the physical advancement of China, in the building [pg 252] of vast railway systems, in creating ports “with future capacity equalling New York harbor,” in re-making the whole face of Eastern Asia as a better home for his beloved race-nation.