 Li Si’s assault on private learning is often misinterpreted as the victory of “Legalist” over “Confucian” ideology, but this is wrong. Confucianism as such was not targeted; actually, it prospered among the court erudites (Kern 2000: 188–191). What mattered to Li Si—as to Han Fei—was not doctrinal unity as such, but the imposition of the state control over intellectual life, as in all other spheres of social activity. Intellectuals were not persecuted because of the content of their ideas; but they were required either to enter government service or to quit their pursuits. Eventually, Li Si’s biblioclasm backfired. It caused not only considerable resentment in the short term, but, more ominously, brought about immense dislike of Qin—and of Legalism—among the overwhelming majority of the imperial literati for millennia to come (Pines 2014a).