The Georgist Influence on Minshengism

A portrait of Sun Yat-sen is displayed in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on national holidays.

While Sun Yat-sen is now universally revered as the Father of the Nation, he spent much of his life in exile from China. Frustrated by the conservatism and stagnation of the Qing dynasty, he became a revolutionary in the 1890’s.

After the Qing suffered an embarrassing defeat in the Sino-Japanese war of 1895, some of Sun’s associates planned an uprising but were discovered and arrested. In 1900 Sun attempted to launch another uprising, but also failed.

Finding himself a persona non grata in his homeland, he spent several years living abroad in Japan, Europe, and the United States. To carry on the fight, he spent his time organizing revolutionary societies and raising funds in the Chinese diaspora.

He also read widely, trying to find an explanation for China’s stagnation in the face of the West (and later Japan’s) modernization. At some point he came across Progress and Poverty, and was inspired enough to use George’s theories as the foundation of his program to revive China’s economy.

During his time in exile, Mr. Sun formulated a threefold doctrine for Chinese revitalization:

The Principle of Nationalism, or Minzu (民族主義)

The Principle of Democracy, or Minquan (民權主義)

The Principle of the People’s Livelihood, or Minsheng (民生主義)

Minzu, Minquan, and Minsheng together formed the Three-Min Doctrine, or San-Min: the Three Principles of the People (三民主義).

The first two Principles, Nationalism and Democracy, deal with social and political reform. Sun’s Nationalism is not ethno-authoritarian but civic-democratic. It aimed to unite the “five races” of China (Han, Manchu, Mongol, Hui, and Tibetan) as one nation, as reflected in the Five-Colored Flag adopted by the fledgling Republic 1912.

In his writings on the Principle of Democracy, Sun was heavily influenced by the American constitutional model. His government included the three branches we know well: Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. It also added two uniquely Chinese branches: the Control branch (to monitor corruption in the other branches) and the Examination branch (to establish and validate the qualifications of public officials).

The Principle of the People’s Livelihood, or Minsheng, is where the ideas of Henry George and other economic reformers enter the picture. This Principle is a little harder to directly translate than the other two, so we’ll just refer to it directly as Minsheng, or Minshengism.

Minsheng consisted of two pillars: equalization of landownership (平均地权), and control of capital (节制资本). As these two pillars suggest, Minshengism attempts to synthesize Georgist and Socialist ideas.

“Equalization of landownership,” as you may assume, is where we see the explicit Georgist influence. To get an idea of how “equalization of landownership” is understood in China, I translated a summary paragraph about it from Baidu Baike (I’ve included the original for those who want to laugh at my translation):

Mr. Yat-sen’s “equalization of landownership” concept was more fully expressed in the declaration of the first National Congress of the Kuomintang. The declaration states: (1) The State stipulates the land law, the land use law, the land acquisition law and the land price tax law, and the government conducts land management and taxation matters; (2) the private land price is quoted by the landlord, and the state levies taxes, if necessary, to buy it at that price. (3) The state provides the tenant farmers with land and the capital needed to cultivate it… This is the main ideological content of Mr. Sun Yat-sen’s “equalization of landownership”. The concept includes Henry George’s land theory, Adolf Damaschke’s theory of land reform, and Mr. Yat-sen’s own ideas of “landlord self-assessed land valuation”, “the land provided to the plougher” and “sharing of future production,” which are all integrated into Mr. Yat-sen’s unique system of thought that is suitable for China’s national conditions. 中山先生”平均地权”思想，较完整的在国民党第一次全国代表大会的宣言中表述出来。宣言中指出： (一)国家规定土地法，土地使用法、土地征收法及地价税法，由政府进行土地管理及征税事宜；(二)私地由地主报价，国家就价征税，必要时依价收买。 (三)国家当给佃农以土地，资其耕种……这便是中山先生”平均地权”的主要思想内容，它将亨利·乔治的土地理论，达马熙克的土地改革理论和他自己的”地主自报地价””耕者有其田””共未来的产”等思想融合进去，形成他自己独特的，认为适合中国国情的较系统思想

This is a decent overview, but I also wanted to learn more about how Minshengism was perceived when it was being implemented by Sun’s party, the Kuomintang (KMT). I’ll also admit that my Chinese reading speed is pretty slow, and I didn’t want to spend too many hours hacking my way through the Chinese internet looking for historical archives.

A little digging turned up a fantastic resource that helped solve both issues: the November, 1928 edition of “The Chinese Students’ Monthly,” an English-language journal published by and for Chinese international students living abroad.

“The Chinese Students’ Monthly” published by the Chinese Students’ Alliance in the United States of America

In it, we can find the following, wonderfully-named article:

Ti-Tsun Li, a student from Peking University, would go on to have a fairly illustrious career as a government official and academic, working in the fields of Intelligence, Diplomacy, and Foreign Affairs.

Early in the article, Li quotes Sun Yat-sen directly, establishing Minshengism as an economic ideology explicitly opposing Western capitalism. . .

“The fundamental difference between the Principle of Livelihood and Capitalism is this: Capitalism makes profit its sole aim, while the Principle of Livelihood makes the subsistence of the people its aim.”

. . . while also positioning itself as a reformist rather than revolutionary movement.

“We can only make changes to the capitalistic system; we must not try to overthrow it all at once”

Minshengism is a sort of synthesis between the thesis of capitalist status quo and the antithesis of socialist revolution. Mr. Li writes that the end goal of Minshengism is very similar to that of socialism, but that Minshengism wants to achieve its goals through peaceful and gradual methods more appropriate to China’s cultural conditions.

The tactics that Minshengism will use to do so will be very familiar to anyone who’s read Progress and Poverty. As Mr. Li explains:

Minsheng-ism, therefore, makes its first concern to popularize the private ownership of land, i.e., to increase the number of independent farmers at the expense of the big landlords. As Dr. Sun tersely expressed it, “To the ploughers belongs the land!” This is to be done through (1) the taxation of land values; (2) the socialization of the unearned increment in land; (3) the exercise of the right of Eminent Domain; (4) the limitation of the maximum amount of land that any individual might own; (5) the establishment of farmers’ loan associations, agricultural banks, etc. to furnish free credit to the poor tenants in purchasing the land they are cultivating.

The first two tactics are pure Henry George. The exercise of eminent domain obviously predates George, but is also referenced in Progress and Poverty as a tacit acknowledgement by society that land is common property.

In brief: George argues that if we really believed in the necessity of private landownership, why would we allow governments to exercise eminent domain? George sees this as evidence that the sovereign nation is — in reality — the only true proprietor of the nation’s land, since private citizens can only lay claim to the parcels that the government doesn’t need. Georgist socialization of landownership makes this relationship explicit instead of veiled, as it currently is.

As for the last two tactics, to my recollection Henry George didn’t advocate for setting explicit limits on how much property a person could own, nor did he discuss agricultural banks. These likely came from socialist sources, as Mr. Li indicates:

. . .Dr. Sun showed the strong influence of Henry George, of the Fabian Socialists, and of the English Agrarian Socialists upon his thought.

Towards the end of the article, Mr. Li weaves a narrative of how Minshengism fits with the other Principles into the larger San-min framework.

A thoroughly democratic government set up according to the San-min principles will, it is believed, do everything in the interest of the whole people. It will undertake, in the first place, to increase the social capital and wealth through encouraging production and through public ownership and operation; in the second place, to diminish gradually and eventually to exterminate private business enterprises through taxation and through progressive nationalization of the industries; in the third place, to check land monopoly and to pave the way of eventual nationalization of all land through the “equalization of landownership.” When these have been done, the problem of livelihood is solved and Communism, the ideal of min-sheng-ism, cannot be far away. Yet nowhere in all of this is there any place for the Communist tactics of violence and destruction.

In essence, Sun Yat-sen’s plan was to use Georgist land policy, encouragement of co-operative firms, and democratic governance to erode — likely over the course of generations — the rent-seeking and exploitative tendencies of capitalism while avoiding the violence of revolution.

Chinese history didn’t turn out that way.

Before he had a chance to enjoy the success of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution and the fall of the Qing in 1912, Sun Yat-sen and his allies were locked in a struggle with a new enemy: Yuan Shikai. Yuan, a former Qing official, had been given the office of President of the fledgling Republic as a reward for his role in securing the emperor’s abdication, but he gradually turned his back on democracy, dissolved the parliament, and proclaimed himself emperor in 1915.

Sun was forced into exile again. The KMT revolted against Yuan Shikai, and Yuan’s own lieutenants, disgusted by his hubris, broke away and formed warlord states. By the time Yuan died in 1916, China was in chaos.

Sun began a campaign to reunite China, planning to transition to democracy after the warlords were subdued. Cancer claimed his life in 1925, the work of unification undone. After a series of intra-party assassinations and power struggles, Chiang Kai-Shek emerged as the new leader of the KMT.

Chiang paid lip service to Sun’s ideals, but spent more time crushing dissent than promoting democracy. Chiang’s violent suppression of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and purging of KMT leftists in 1927 would later be remembered as the “first shot” of the Chinese Civil War. Sun Yat-sen’s widow, Soong Ching-ling, denounced Chiang as a traitor to Sun’s legacy and supported the CPC. Her younger sister, Soong Mei-ling, married Chiang later that year.

Sensing China’s weakness in the midst of the Civil War, the Japanese invaded in 1937, making matters far worse. Fighting on multiple fronts, Chiang grew desperate, at times willing to throw away millions of civilian lives for the war effort. China would suffer tens of millions of casualties during Japanese occupation.

Chiang had a moment of victory when Japan surrendered in 1945, but resentment had grown to a boiling point. The Civil War instantly resumed and in 1949 the KMT was expelled to Taiwan and the People’s Republic was founded.

Despite this endless chaos and political schism, Sun Yat-sen’s ideal of San-min lived on throughout the Sinosphere. Through its influence, Henry George’s work had a significant effect on land policy in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.