Purpose – To review one of the earliest Chinese debates on socialism, highlighting the consequent changes in outlook by Sun Yat-sen and Liang Qichao; and to demonstrate the influence of Western economic writers especially Richard T. Ely, Henry George, and German Bismarckian socialists....

The Boxer uprising in China (1900) killed quite a number of foreigners and missionaries, which induced the armies of eight Western powers to invade China and they imposed an indemnity of 400 million silver taels. The international silver price around the 1900s was slumping, and these...