The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu ILinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Sun, Yat-sen, 1866-1925. San min zhu yi
The consequences of a national economic revolution could not but be
far-reaching. The political changes in the economic situation demanded by
Sun Yat-sen in his program of economic nationalism—the return of tariff
autonomy, the retrocession of the occupied concessions, etc.—would have a
great positive and immediate effect; but there would be a long system of
development, not to be so easily predicted or foreseen, which would
inevitably appear as a result of Chinese nationhood. If China were to have
a state strong enough to perform the economic functions which Sun wished
to have imposed upon it, and were to take her place as one of the great
importing and exporting nations of the world, it is obvious that a real
economic revolution would have to be gone through.
Here again the liberal-national character of Sun’s ideology and programs
with respect to relations with the West appears. The Fascist states of the
present time exhibit a definite drift from free trade to autarchy. In
China the change from an autarchic world-society to a trading nation
constituted the reverse. Sun Yat-sen did not leave a large legacy of
programs in this connection, but he foresaw the development and was much
concerned about it.
The Industrial Revolution.
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 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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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