The plans for realizing _min shêng_ were to be the most necessary and the most difficult. In the change from a world-society to a race-nation, the Chinese had their own social solidarity and the experience of the Western nations to guide them. There was little in the development of a nation that had not already been tried elsewhere. The only real obstacles were the ignorance of the people, in relation to the new social environment in which their whole society was involved, and the possibility of opposition from the politically oppressing powers. In the development of democracy the Chinese could rely in part upon the experience of the West. The Kuomintang could observe the machinery of democratic states in regular operation abroad. Although the new democracy of the five powers and the four rights was differed from the democratic methods of the West, still, as in mechanics, certain fundamental rules of political organization in its technical details could be relied upon. The Chinese people had a democratic background in the autonomy of the various extra-political units. In _min shêng_ neither the experience of the West nor the old Chinese background would be of much value. More than the other two principles and programs, _min shêng_ sought to alter the constitution and nature of Chinese society. Yet in _min shêng_ the Chinese were to be guided only negatively by Western experience. Into their society, passing through a great economic upheaval, they must introduce, by a trial-and-error method, the requirements for economic unity, efficiency, and justice. The National Economic Revolution. After the pitiable failure of the 1912 Republic, Sun Yat-sen began to place an especially heavy emphasis on the necessity of a national economic revolution which would carry on the achievements of the national political revolution. He placed an even greater stress upon the necessity of _min shêng_ in the revolutionary ideology, and became more and more clearly conscious of the danger imperialism constituted to the Chinese race-nation. He believed that, as the 1912 revolution had been created by the sword, the new economic revolution might be furthered by the pen, and with this in mind he wrote _The International Development of China_. At the time that he wrote this work, he seems to have been convinced of the fruitlessness of purely military effort, and the superior value of pacific economic organization.(299)