Sun Yat‐Sen's Adoption and Creative Transformation of Henry George's Economic Thought

ABSTRACT As a pioneering figure in China's modern democratic revolution, Sun Yat‐sen's land theory was profoundly influenced by the American economist Henry George's “Single Tax” doctrine. However, rather than a direct transplantation, Sun creatively adapted it to China's semicolonial agrarian reality. Sun moved beyond George's tax‐centric static model, integrating land issues into the grand framework of the “principle of people's livelihood.” He proposed a dual‐track system combining “land to the tiller” (private land‐use rights) and “public ownership of land value increments” (socialized development gains). He transformed George's distributive justice into a state‐led developmental strategy. Land value increments were leveraged to fund infrastructure and strategic industry nationalization, establishing an “investment‐appreciation‐redevelopment” cycle that prefigured East Asia's developmental state model. Sun's theoretical core drew from Chinese traditions: the egalitarian ethos of the well‐field system (jingtian zhi), Confucian people‐centered governance (minben), and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's land communalization ideal. Sun's adaptation epitomizes modern Sino‐Western intellectual fusion. His principle of people's livelihood not only resolved ethical dilemmas in land distribution but also provided a systematic blueprint for national modernization, offering critical insights into the localization of economic thought in modern China.