Sun Yat-sen stated that Minsheng (People's Livelihood) is equivalent to socialism, but later clarified that China did not need class struggle and instead advocated land equalization and capital regulation to prevent monopolization.

Caveats

• The equivalence between Minsheng and 'socialism' was not as clean or settled as the claim implies — scholars describe the term as 'notorious for its ambiguity,' with interpretations ranging from Western socialism to a Confucian concept of people's livelihood.
• The claim implies a tidy 'stated → later clarified' chronological sequence, but Sun's ideology evolved in a complex, sometimes internally contradictory way over several decades, influenced by Confucianism, Henry George's land value tax theory, and selective engagement with Marxism.
• Sun's early 'equalization of land rights' was primarily an urban land taxation device; the broader agrarian reform dimension only became explicit around 1924, complicating the claim's framing of land equalization as a straightforward, longstanding policy pillar.