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 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: The first step in reconstruction is to promote the economic well-being of the people by providing for their four necessities of life, namely, food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. For this purpose, the Government will, with the people’s co-operation, develop agriculture to give the people an adequate food supply, promote textile industries to solve their clothing problem, institute gigantic housing schemes to provide for them decent living quarters, and build roads and canals so that they may have convenient means of travel. Next is the promotion of democracy.... The third step is the development of nationalism....(298)