Sun Yat-sen pointed out that the basis for the weakness of China, and its exploitation by the foreigners, was the inadequacy of the Chinese ideology. “The reason why we suffer from foreign oppression is our ignorance; we ‘are born in a stupor and die in a dream’.”(240) Conscious of the peril of the foreign economic oppression, the Chinese had to exert economic nationalism to clear the way for the positive initiation of a program of _min shêng_. In practising economic nationalism, there were two ways that the Chinese could make the force of their national union and national spirit felt: first, through the actual advancement of the programs of the whole of nationalism and the progress of the political and economic condition of the country; second, through non-coöperation, “... a negative boycott which weakens the action of imperialism, protects national standing, and preserves from destruction.”(241) Political Nationalism for National Autonomy. After the first steps of resistance to economic oppression, the Chinese nationalists would have to launch a counter-attack on the political oppression practised upon China by the Western powers. In his discussion of this, Sun Yat-sen described, though briefly, the past, the contemporary, and the future of that oppression, and referred to its methods. His theory also contained three answers to this oppression which need to be examined in a consideration of his theoretical program of Chinese nationalism: first, the question of China’s nationalist program of political anti-imperialism; second, the nature of the ultimate development of nationalism and a national state; and third, the theory of the class war of the nations. In view of the fact that this last is a theory in itself, and one quite significant in the distinction between the doctrines of Sun Yat-sen and those of Marxism-Leninism, it will be considered separately. The first two questions of the program of nationalism are, then: what is to be the negative action for the advancement of China’s national political strength, in opposing the political power of the West? and what is to be the positive, internal program of Chinese nationalism?