Part 6 — PROGRAM V

In the preceding four programs, I dealt exclusively with the development of the key and basic industries. In this one, I am going to deal with the development of the main group of industries which need foreign help. By the main group of industries, I mean those industries which provide every individual and family with the necessaries and comforts of life. Of course, when the key and basic industries are developed, the various other industries will spontaneously spring up all over the country, in a very short time. This had been the case in Europe and America after the industrial revolution. The development of the key and the basic industries will give plenty of work to the people and will raise their wages as well as their standard of living. When wages are high, the price for necessaries and comforts of life will also be increased. So the rise in wages will be accompanied by the rise in the cost of living. Therefore, the aim of the development of some of the main group of industries is to help reduce the high cost of living when China is in the process of international development, by giving to the majority of the people plenty of the essentials and comforts of life as well as higher wages.

It is commonly thought that China is the cheapest country to live in. This is a misconception owing to the common notion of measuring everything by the value of money. If we measure the cost of living by the value of labor then it will be found that China is the most expensive country for a common worker to live in. A Chinese coolie, a muscular worker, has to work 14 to 16 hours a day in order to earn a bare subsistence. A clerk in a shop, or a teacher in a village school cannot earn more than a hundred dollars a year. And the farmers after paying their rents and exchanging for a few articles of need with their produce have to live from hand to mouth. Labor is very cheap and plentiful but food and commodities of life are just enough to go round for the great multitude of the four hundred millions in China in an ordinary good year. In a bad year, a great number succumb to want and starvation. This miserable condition among the Chinese proletariat is due to the non-development of the country, the crude methods of production and the wastefulness of labor. The radical cure for all this is industrial development by foreign capital and experts for the benefit of the whole nation. Europe and America are a hundred years ahead of us in industrial development; so in order to catch up in a very short time we have to use their capital, mainly their machinery. If foreign capital cannot be gotten, we will have to get at least their experts and inventors to make for us our own machinery. In any case, we must use machinery to assist our enormous man-power to develop our unlimited resources.

In modern civilization, the material essentials of life are five, namely: food, clothing, shelter, means of locomotion, and the printed page. Accordingly I will formulate this program as follows:

I. The Food Industry. II. The Clothing Industry. III. The Housing Industry. IV. The Motoring Industry. V. The Printing Industry.