 It was only at the turn of the twentieth century that Legalism was rediscovered and partly rehabilitated by the new generations of intellectuals. Frustrated by China’s inability to reconstitute itself in a modern world as a “powerful state with a strong army,” young intellectuals began searching for a variety of non-traditional responses to domestic and external challenges; among these, some turned toward Legalism. It was deemed relevant not only because it had demonstrable practical achievements in the past, but also because of its innovativeness, willingness to depart from the patterns of the past, and even its quasi-scientific outlook. For instance, the first major promulgator of interest in Shang Yang’s thought, Mai Menghua 麥夢華 (1874–1915), was positively attracted by the surprising similarity between Shang Yang’s views of history and evolutionary ideas of Occidental social theorists; and he further identified in the Book of Lord Shang parallels to the Western ideas of imperialism, nationalism, statism (guojiazhuyi 國家主義), and even the rule of law (Li Yu-ning 1977: lviii-lix). Even such a major liberal thinker as Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) was willing to forgive the Legalists their notorious harshness and oppressiveness, hailing Han Fei and Li Si for their “brave spirit of opposing those who ‘do not make the present into their teacher but learn from the past’” (Hu Shi 1930: 6.480–81). Slightly later, it was no less a figure than Hu Hanmin 胡漢民 (1879–1936), one of the most eminent Guomindang 國民黨 (Kuomintang, KMT, “Party of the Nation”) leaders, who wrote a preface to a new edition of the Book of Lord Shang (Hu Hanmin 1933).