Self-defense, Peng Yuting called it Zhenping's "nationalism". He believes that the nationalism mentioned by Sun Yat-sen is aimed at imperialist aggression against China, and the oppression and exploitation of Zhenping does not directly come from imperialism, but from domestic bandits, bandit troops and corrupt officials. Zhenping's nationalism is to avoid these three kinds of oppression and exploitation through self-defense. Self-defense is the guarantee of autonomy and self-enrichment. Self-defense plays an extremely important role in Peng Yuting's thought of local autonomy, which is a key step for him to promote localism.
Autonomy is the "democracy" of towns. Peng Yuting believes that autonomy is a part of civil rights, that is, the implementation of civil rights at the lower level. It can also be said that autonomy is the starting point of civil rights. Sun Yat-sen's democracy advocates four kinds of direct civil rights, namely, the right to vote, the right to recall, the right to create and the right to veto. If autonomy is not advocated, Sun Yat-sen's civil rights will have nothing to do with us in another hundred years. Local autonomy was originally the legacy of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, but a generation of corrupt officials have long regarded the legacy of the Prime Minister as a document, and they are still ruling from top to bottom with the power accumulated in two thousand years. Regarding autonomy, or shouting slogans and putting up slogans to perfunctory the face of the Republic of China, it is absolutely not allowed to talk about real "people's autonomy." Therefore, there is no reason for the government and the people to cooperate on the issue of autonomy. When we are autonomous, we must overthrow the official rule. After the official rule was overthrown, the local tyrants and evil gentry lost their amulets and there were no obstacles to our autonomy. So autonomy is the narrowing of the Three People's Principles. The first step of self-government is to organize people to carry out training so that they can exercise their functions and powers in managing local areas. The second step is to implement genuine universal suffrage. It is not enough for the people to elect their trusted district heads, mayors, township heads and village heads and to stabilize social order through self-defense and autonomy. Improving people's living standards and getting rid of poverty and backwardness is the purpose of autonomy. Therefore, the third step of localism is "self-enrichment".
Self-enrichment is the "livelihood" of Zhenping. The main content of Sun Yat-sen's people's livelihood principle is "controlling capital and averaging land rights". As far as the specific situation of Zhenping is concerned, Peng Yuting thinks that "controlling capital" seems inappropriate, because no one in Zhenping can talk about control. The "average land ownership" adopts the method of progressive tax to achieve the purpose of average. In addition, we must find ways to increase production, improve agriculture, build water conservancy projects, plant trees, set up factories and set up credit cooperatives. There is a way of production and a way of distribution, which is the success of calming the people's livelihood.
Through the above three steps, create a new ballast. Peng Yuting summed up his ideal society in sixteen words. That is, "the door is not closed at night, the road is not picked up, the village does not go to court, and every family has more than enough." In such an ideal society, there is political democracy, social stability, economic prosperity and harmonious neighborhood. He praised such a society as the Three People's Principles. He believes that when Sun Yat-sen talked about local autonomy, he expected to get these sixteen words. If the whole country practices local autonomy and realizes such an ideal society, then Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles can be realized.