 The Huainanzi represents the most sophisticated expression of the tendency toward synthesis popular in the early Han period, as well as the high-water mark of the trend, before it began to recede in the years after the Han political consolidation of vassal states. Despite this, a strong current of the kind of syncretism found in the Huainanzi would continue to thrive in Chinese thought, ultimately facilitating the construction of the unique kinds of Buddhist thought that emerged in China in later centuries, which heavily borrowed from both Daoist and Confucian ideas.