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Sun Yat-sen's Early Land Policy The Origin and Meaning of “Equalization of Land Rights”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Harold Schiffrin
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Aside from its current significance, the recent report from Taiwan announcing the inauguration of a new urban land tax grogram based upon the teachings of Sun Yat-sen serves to reawaken interest in one of his most controversial doctrines—the min sheng principle. The use of Sun's pʻing-chün ti-chʻüan—“equalization of land rights”—as a specifically urban taxation device raises a question concerning the original scope and purpose of this major aspect of the min sheng program. Taken by itself, “equalization of land rights” has an agrarian land tenure reform connotation, and has often been associated with land redistribution, some of its alternative translations being “equitable redistribution of the land” and more recently “proportionalization of the land.” Yet a study of Sun's prolific expositions of this theme starting with the Tʻung Meng Hui manifesto of 1905 down through the first year of the Republic when he was most actively concerned with the promotion of min sheng fails to substantiate the agrarian reform interpretation. On the contrary, according to the available sources for this period, there are few explicit references to the excesses of rural landlordism and the maldistribution of landholdings which in 1924 finally prompted Sun publicly to declare a “land to the tiller” policy. During this formative period for Kuomintang ideology, Sun's use of “equalization of land rights,” and the Western doctrines from which it was derived, indicate a definite preoccupation with the potential problems of a future capitalist order rather than concern with the aberrations of China's current agrarian structure.

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , August 1957 , pp. 549 - 564
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1957

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References

1 Free China Weekly (Chinese News Service, New York, Feb. 7, 1956), “Taiwan Launches Urban Land Reform Program.” This statute on the “equalization of land rights” calls for a progressive tax on land values (1.5% to 6.5%) and a 30% to 90% tax on future increments of urban land values.

TLCS is used in this article as an abbreviation for Tsung-li chʻüan-shu (Taipei, 1952).

The author is indebted to Professor Robert A. Scalapino, who supervised this research. The assistance of Professor Shih-hsiang Chen, Professor Choh-ming Li, and Mr. Fang Chaoying, all of the University of California, is also gratefully acknowledged.

2 Teng and Fairbank, for example, write: “The manifesto of 1905 also strikes a new and truly revolutionary note in espousing the equalization of land ownership—in short, land redistribution—an old device but a potent one” (China's Response to the West [Cambridge, Mass., 1954], p. 226)Google Scholar. Tʻang Leang-li translates pʻing-chün ti-chʻüan as “the equitable redistribution of land” (The Inner History of the Chinese Revolution [London, 1930], p. 49)Google Scholar; while a recent translation is “the proportionalization of the land” (Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary [Taipei, 1953], Appendix I, p. 185).

3 See the third lecture on min sheng in the San Min Chu-I discourses, Tsung-li chʻüan-chi, ed. Hu Han-min (Shanghai, 1930), I, 252.

4 Tsou Lu, Chung-kuo kuo-min-tang shih-kao (Chungking, 1944), I, 14.

5 See Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary, pp. 149–150.

6 See Feng Tzu-yu, Ko-ming i-shih (Shanghai, 1946–47), II, 144; III, 205–213.

7 Tsung-li chʻüan-chi, I, 289. An English translation appears in Teng and Fairbank, p. 228; however, they render jeng-shu yüan-chu so-yu “shall be received by the owner” instead of “shall still be considered the property of the owner.” The latter is similar to the translation of Lyon Sharman, Sun Yat-sen (New York, 1934), p. 119Google Scholar. The word “received” implies government purchase of the land, which I do not believe is the intent of the manifesto.

8 Sun Yat-sen, Fundamentals of National Reconstruction (Taipei, 1953), Appendices, pp. 196–197.

9 This article appears in Feng, IV, 116–134.

10 See Feng, IV, 25–64, for a list of Hsing Chung Hui members, indicating a predominance of merchants before 1905.

11 See TLCS, X, tsʻe 1, 61.

12 “Sun Chung-shan ‘pʻing-chün ti-chʻüan’ cheng-kang ti chʻan sheng ho fa-chan” [“The Genesis and Development of Sun Yat-sen's Political Principle, ‘Equalization of Land Rights’”], Kuang-ming jih-pao (Peking, Oct. 27, 1955). This background article from the Communist press quotes from Liang's attacks which appeared in the Hsin-min tsʻung-pao in 1906.

13 See Tsou Lu, Vol. I, Sec. II, pp. 449–150. Hu's article contains the strongest antilandlord sentiments which I have seen in the sources which are available for this period. But even here, the justification for Sun's program is the experience of the urbanized West, rather than the actual conditions of the Chinese land tenure system. Although called “land nationalization,” the proposal is essentially the same as George's socialization of rent.

14 TLCS, VI, tsʻe 1,25–26.

15 TLCS, VI, tsʻe 1, 28.

16 Hsiao Cheng, Tʻu-ti kai-ko chih li-lun yü shih-chi (Taipei, 1951), p. 29. Most of these speeches can be found in TLCS VI, tsʻe 1, Apr.-Dec. 1912.

17 TLCS, VI, tsʻe 1, 64.

18 This interview was reported in the American single-tax organ, The Public (Chicago, April 12, 1912), XV, No. 732, p. 349.Google Scholar

19 Chicago Sunday Tribune, (March 10, 1912), Sec. II, p. 1; quoted in Chang, Hou-Chun, “China,” in Land Value Taxation Around the World, ed. Brown, H. G. and others (New York, 1955), p. 186.Google Scholar

20 See Macklin's report in the Single Tax Year Book, ed. Miller, Joseph D. (New York, 1917), pp. 188–192Google Scholar. His translation of Progress and Poverty (not a literal version) appeared in 1899. Sun, who later discussed this work with Macklin, expressed a preference for a more literal translation.

21 Single Tax Year Book, p. 190.

22 See the Republican Advocate (Shanghai, May 25, 1912), Vol. I, No. 8, p. 305.

23 See the Kuang-ming jih-pao article on “equalization of land rights.”

24 TLCS, VI, tsʻe 1, 97.

25 TLCS, VI, tsʻe 1, 231–232.

26 TLCS, VI, tsʻe 1, 224.

27 While in these public addresses Sun associates the land problem with the future advent of capitalism, there are some signs that he was thinking about more direct measures of aiding the peasants. The Kuang-ming jih-pao article reports that Sun told Yüan Shih-kʻai at that time that “China is a country that is based upon agriculture… if we want to solve the peasant problem, then it cannot be done except if the tiller owns his land.” Yet this foreshadowing of the 1924 “land to the tiller” policy was not apparent in his official pronouncements.

28 Sun proposed a unique method of self-assessment in place of the government valuation systems prevalent in the West. Each owner would submit his own valuation, with the state always reserving the right to purchase the land at the original self-assessed value, thus deterring an owner from under-assessing his property. And the annual tax would discourage him from over-valuation.

29 TLCS, VI, tsʻe 1, 81.

30 That Sun's use of the expression tʻu-ti kuo-yu (state ownership of land) did not refer to the actual nationalization of agrarian land is clearly explained by Tsʻui Shu-chʻin, who concludes that the “policy of equalization of land-ownership was intended for the urban land,” and that it was not until his late years that Sun formulated an agrarian program. See his article, “Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Land Program and the Nationalization of Land,” Free China Review (Taipei, Sept. 1952), II, No. 7, pp. 7–11.

31 TLCS, VI, tsʻe 1, 229.

32 George Bernard Shaw wrote: “When I was thus swept into the great Socialist revival of 1883, I found that five-sixths of those who were swept in with me had been converted by Henry George” (Barker, Charles A., Henry George, [New York, 1955], p. 376).Google Scholar

33 Tʻang Leang-li states that when Sun was in America (June-Sept. 1896) prior to his voyage to England, he “came into contact with the ‘Single-Taxers’ who were at that time busily engaged preparing for Henry George's second Mayoral Campaign” (The Inner History of the Chinese Revolution, p. 24). But the campaign actually took place a year later (It was Bryan's presidential campaign that was in progress in 1896.), and the evidence seems to indicate that it was in England that Sun first became acquainted with this doctrine. See Lyon Sharman, p. 58.

34 J. A. Hobson, quoted in Charles A. Barker, Henry George, p. 416.

35 Gide, Charles and Rist, Charles, A History of Economic Doctrines (London, 1932), p. 559.Google Scholar

36 Barker, Ernest, Political Thought in England (New York, 1915), p. 214.Google Scholar

37 See Geiger, George R., The Philosophy of Henry George (Grand Forks, North Dakota, 1931)Google Scholar, for a discussion of George's predecessors. Spencer's Social Statics (1850) and Dove's Theory of Human Progression (1850) were translated into Chinese by Macklin.

38 Mill, John Stuart, Dissertations and Discussions (New York, 1874), V, 225.Google Scholar

39 Ernest Barker, Political Thought in England, p. 215.

40 The New York socialist journal Volkszeitung announced that it supported George's first mayoral candidacy in 1886 not because of the single tax, “but in spite of it” (Geiger, p. 202). Soon afterwards, however, George broke with American radicals and began deriving support from middle-class circles. Yet the British Fabians, who like the American socialists went beyond George and advocated the socialization of capital as well as rent, were still prepared to exploit George's crusading zeal. See Webb's letter prior to George's 1889 visit to England, in Charles Barker, pp. 516–517.

41 Progress and Poverty (New York, 1955 ed.), p. 295, p. 328.Google Scholar

42 Geiger, pp. 114–115.

43 Geiger, p. 214.

44 See Charles Barker, pp. 539–541.

45 Progress and Poverty, pp. 455–456.

46 Agricultural land rent in China, which could amount to as much as 50% of the annual yield, would be equivalent to as much as 20% of the market value if the latter is calculated at 2.5 times the yield, as is the practice on Taiwan. And without rent control legislation, which Sun did not include in his program at this time, the landlord could shift the tax on to the tenant.

47 Henry George might have criticized Sun's future unearned-increment tax on the same grounds that he rejected Mill's similar proposal: “Mr. Mill's plans for nationalizing the ‘future unearned increase in the value of land’ … would not add to the injustice of the present distribution of wealth, but it would not remedy it. Further speculative advance of rent would cease. … But it would leave, for all the future, one class in possession of the enormous advantage over others which they now have. All that can be said of this plan is, that it might be better than nothing” (Progress and Poverty, pp. 361–362).

48 TLCS, VI, tsʻe 1, 28.

49 Scheftel, Yetta, The Taxation of Land Value (New York, 1916), p. 185.Google Scholar

50 Tʻu-ti kai-ko chih li-lun yü shih-chi, p. 23. Schrameier later acted as Sun's adviser in Canton.

51 Fillebrown, C. E., The Principles of Natural Taxation (Chicago, 1917), p. 173.Google Scholar

52 Condliffe, John B., New Zealand in the Making (London, 1930), p. 182.Google Scholar

53 See Howe's, Frederic C.Confessions of a Reformer (New York, 1925), p. 228, for a similar use of this technique in Cleveland in 1910.Google Scholar

54 See Jansen, Marius B., The Japanese and Sun Yat-sen (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), pp. 118–119.Google Scholar

55 Progress and Poverty, pp. 273–274.

56 See Seligman's, E. R. A. “The Single Tax” in his Essays on Taxation (New York, 1895), pp. 64–94.Google Scholar

57 See UN, Department of Economic Affairs publ., Land Reform (New York, 1951), p. 45.Google Scholar

58 Progress and Poverty, pp. 111–122.

59 Brown, H. G., The Economic Basis of Tax Reform (Columbia, Missouri, 1932), p. 229.Google Scholar

60 See Tang, Hui-Sun, Land Reform in Free China (Taipei, 1954).Google Scholar

61 Hyndman, Henry Mayers, The Record of an Adventurous Life (New York, 1911), p. 257.Google Scholar

62 Barker, Charles, Henry George, p. 564.Google Scholar

63 Woo, T. C., The Kuomintang and the Future of the Chinese Revolution (London, 1928), pp. 185–186.Google Scholar