The International Development of ChinaSun, Yat-sen
History
The International Development of China
Sun, Yat-sen
China -- Economic conditions -- 1912-1949; Railroads -- China
In the preceding four programs, I dealt exclusively with the
development of the key and basic industries. In this one, I am going to
deal with the development of the _main_ group of industries which need
foreign help. By the main group of industries, I mean those industries
which provide every individual and family with the necessaries and
comforts of life. Of course, when the key and basic industries are
developed, the various other industries will spontaneously spring up
all over the country, in a very short time. This had been the case in
Europe and America after the industrial revolution. The development of
the key and the basic industries will give plenty of work to the people
and will raise their wages as well as their standard of living. When
wages are high, the price for necessaries and comforts of life will
also be increased. So the rise in wages will be accompanied by the rise
in the cost of living. Therefore, the aim of the development of some of
the main group of industries is to help reduce the high cost of living
when China is in the process of international development, by giving
to the majority of the people plenty of the essentials and comforts of
life as well as higher wages.
It is commonly thought that China is the cheapest country to live
in. This is a misconception owing to the common notion of measuring
everything by the value of money. If we measure the cost of living
by the value of labor then it will be found that China is the most
expensive country for a common worker to live in. A Chinese coolie, a
muscular worker, has to work 14 to 16 hours a day in order to earn a
bare subsistence. A clerk in a shop, or a teacher in a village school
cannot earn more than a hundred dollars a year. And the farmers after
paying their rents and exchanging for a few articles of need with
their produce have to live from hand to mouth. Labor is very cheap
and plentiful but food and commodities of life are just enough to go
round for the great multitude of the four hundred millions in China in
an ordinary good year. In a bad year, a great number succumb to want
and starvation. This miserable condition among the Chinese proletariat
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. Europe and America are a hundred years
ahead of us in industrial development; so in order to catch up in a
very short time we have to use their capital, mainly their machinery.
If foreign capital cannot be gotten, we will have to get at least their
experts and inventors to make for us our own machinery. In any case,
we must use machinery to assist our enormous man-power to develop our
unlimited resources.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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