In the early Western Han Dynasty, social production was severely damaged, the economy was depressed, people's lives were miserable, and social materials were extremely scarce. In this case, how to restore the feudal ruling order and develop the feudal economy is the primary problem related to whether the landlord regime in the Western Han Dynasty can be maintained. If the Western Han Dynasty wants to avoid repeating the mistakes of the Qin Dynasty, it can only abandon the legalist thought of severe punishment and find another way. This other way is "the theory of Huang Lao's inaction", that is, the strategy of "rest and recuperation", and Taoist thought is dominant. (The so-called "Huang Lao Theory" is actually two factions of Taoism. "Huang" refers to "the learning of the Yellow Emperor" and "Lao" refers to the theory of Laozi. The study of the Yellow Emperor formed a school in the Warring States period, which is a school of Taoism. The fundamental difference between it and Laozi's theory is that the study of Huangdi not only preaches, but also teaches. In the early Han Dynasty, Huang and Lao were confused and became the political guiding ideology of the ruling class.

The characteristics of Huang Lao's theory are: on the premise of politically affirming the ruling order of the new feudal unified dynasty and acknowledging the unchangeable relationship between monarch and minister, he strongly advocates "governing by doing nothing" and thinks that rulers can alleviate social contradictions and stabilize the ruling order through doing nothing. On the contrary, the more "promising" the ruling class is, the more "difficult" it is; There are too many decrees of the rulers, which makes "thieves everywhere". This is different from the political ideal of enriching the people in a small country advocated by Laozi. It is an idea of maintaining a unified feudal system. Under the guidance of this thought, in order to meet the needs of restoring production and stabilizing feudal rule order, the rulers in the early Han Dynasty adopted the policy of "conforming to the people's feelings and relieving the people". Emperor Gaozu's policy of recuperation and "the rule of literary scene" are the concrete embodiment of this thought. )

After 70 years' rest and recuperation in the early Han Dynasty, the rule of the landlord class was consolidated and the social economy made new progress. However, with the gradual consolidation of the Han regime, new problems have emerged: "harmony" can not fundamentally eliminate the harassment of the Huns; The "enfeoffment system" lurks the crisis of separatist regime division. In the early Han Dynasty, Huang Lao's thought of "governing by doing nothing" could no longer meet the requirements of the new era, and Confucianism, which advocated strengthening the centralization of monarchy and realizing great unity, replaced it. Therefore, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty accepted Dong Zhongshu's suggestion of "ousting a hundred schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone", that is, taking the Confucianism transformed by Dong Zhongshu as the ruling thought.

The reason why Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty used Dong Zhongshu's Confucianism as a ruling tool is because Dong Zhongshu emphasized that "great unification" is suitable for the needs of political unity and the need to strengthen monarchy and centralization, which can be used as a theoretical basis for strengthening centralization. Secondly, it is because Dong Zhongshu's Confucianism has absorbed Taoism, Legalism and other theories that are conducive to the rule of the landlord class, and is no longer the pure Confucianism in the past. For example, he said that "the greatness of Tao originates from heaven, and the sky remains unchanged, and the Tao remains unchanged", and he used the Taoist view of heaven to serve the feudal regime, saying that the emperor was the son of heaven and ruled the people on behalf of heaven. Dong Zhongshu also put special emphasis on the rule of law, integrating Confucianism and legalism, and advocated "focusing on education" and "the appropriateness of law". Its essence is the combination of Confucianism and legalism, so it is called "overlord and miscellaneous soldier" in history, arbitrarily referring to legalism; Wang Dao refers to Confucianism; That is, the ideological rule of combining Confucianism and law advocates Confucianism on the surface, and its essence is to adopt the theory that legalists strengthen the centralization of absolute monarchy, that is, Confucianism outside and law inside. At the same time, it is also mixed. Therefore, in the Western Han Dynasty, not all Confucianism was used, nor all Taoism was used, but Taoism, Confucianism and Taoism were used successively, and finally they merged with each other, and it was decided to take Confucianism as the outside and adopt Taoism at the same time. This thought was based on the Confucian line and supplemented by the Legalist line, which absorbed the rational thought of Taoism and laid the basic pattern of China's feudal social ruling thought. Since then, the mode of governing the country with Confucian ethics as the core, legalists' severe punishment and strict laws as the supplement, and Taoist politics as the basis basically conforms to the ancient national conditions of China, and has become an unchangeable strategy pursued by the ruling classes in past dynasties, which has had a great and far-reaching impact on the development of ancient China history.