Of the three forms of the foreign oppression of China, the economic, because it did not show itself so readily, and was already working full force, was the most dangerous. It was from this oppression that China had sunk to the degraded position of a sub-colony. “This economic oppression, this immense tribute is a thing which we did not dream of; it is something which cannot be easily detected, and hence we do not feel the awful shame of it.”(232) Sun Yat-sen, as stated above, was not hostile to the development of that portion of foreign capital which he regarded as fairly employed in China, and spent a great part of his life in seeking to introduce capital from outside. He did, however, make a distinction between the just operation of economic forces, and the unjust combination of the economic with the politically oppressive. Foreign capital in China was not oppressive because it was capital; it was oppressive because it held a privileged position, and because it was reinforced by political and military sanctions. There is no implication in Sun Yat-sen’s works that the operations of finance, when not unjustly interfered with by political action, could, even when adverse to China, be regarded as wrong of themselves. In what ways, then, did foreign capital so invest its position with unjust non-economic advantages that it constituted a burden and an oppression? There were, according to Sun Yat-sen, six headings under which the various types of economic incursion could be classified, with the consequence that a total of one billion two hundred million Chinese dollars were unjustly exacted from the Chinese economy every year by the foreigners. First, the control of the Customs services having, by treaty, been surrendered by China, and a standard _ad valorem_ tariff having also been set by treaty, the Chinese had to leave their markets open to whatever foreign commerce might choose to come. They were not in a position to foster their new modern industries by erecting a protective tariff, as had the United States in the days of its great industrial development.(233) China’s adverse balance in trade constituted a heavy loss to the already inadequate capital of the impoverished nation. Furthermore, the amount of the possible revenue which could be collected under an autonomous tariff system was lost. Again, foreign goods were not required, by treaty stipulation, to pay the internal transit taxes which Chinese goods had to pay. As a result, the customs situation really amounted to the development of a protective system for foreign goods in China, to the direct financial loss of the Chinese, and to the detriment of their industrial development. He estimated that half a billion dollars, Chinese, was lost yearly, through this politically established economic oppression.(234) Obviously, one of the first steps of Chinese economic nationalism had to be tariff autonomy.