On the basis of the outlines of the ideology and the social system that Sun Yat-sen proposed, viewed from the perspective of the old Confucian world-society, the reader will realize that this declaration of the industrial revolution is the boldest of Sun Yat-sen’s acts, and that the meaning of _min shêng_ as a program of complete modernization and reconstruction is superior to other possible meanings it may have, in regard to theoretical national or social revolution. There is nothing remote or philosophical about the significance of _min shêng_ when so viewed; it is a plan to which a Lenin or a Henry Ford might subscribe with equal fervor—although a Tagore would deplore it. It is here that Sun Yat-sen appears as the champion of the West against the traditional technological stagnation of China. Yet just there, at the supreme point of his Westernism, we must remember what he was fighting for: the life of a race-nation and a civilization that was contradictory to the West. The stability of Confucianism could not serve as a cloak for reaction and stagnant thought. For its own good, nay, its own life, Chinese civilization had to modernize (i. e., Westernize economically) in order to compete in a West-ruled world. But what, more specifically, was the socio-economic position of Sun Yat-sen? Was he a Marxian? Was he a liberal? Was he neither? Western Influences: Henry George, Marxism and Maurice William. As previously stated there are three parts which may be distinguished in the ideology of the principle of _min shêng_. _Min shêng_ is, first, the economic aspect of the national revolution—the creation of an active race-nation of China implementing its power by, second, technological revolution. Third, it connotes also the necessity of a social revolution of some kind. Western commentators have been prone to ignore the significance of _min shêng_ in the first two of these meanings, and have concentrated on disputation concerning the third part. The question of the right system of distribution has become so prominent in much Western revolutionary thought that, to many, it sums up the whole moral issue concerning what is good and bad in society.(159) They are uninterested in or ignorant of the great importance that the first two aspects of _min shêng_ possess for the Chinese mind. The third part, the application of _min shêng_ to the problems that are in the West the cause of social revolution, and to the possible application of social revolution to China, is important, but is by no means the complete picture.