Approximately 280 BC was born the first Chinese legalist, Han Fei. He was a comprehensive genius with wide field of knowledge during the Spring-Autumn and Warring States Period (770-221 BC). Actually he was a philosopher inheriting and learning much more from all the classical philosophers or thinkers, such as Confucius (551-479), Lao Zi (? 540-? 470 BC), Mo Zi (478-392 BC), Xun Zi (? 289-238 BC). Han Fei or Hanfei Zi is different from other scholars in the combination between theory and practice. He tried to carry out his scholar thought in social practice. He didn't "tie up his theory into the top of book-pavilion" for flaunting to display of his own greatness. He used to propagate his legalist or policy-reforming thought in order to put his political ideal into an action. He had done much more contributions to ancient Chinese ideological building. Perhaps he was the first outstanding scholar who explained the theory of Lao Zi. Under the guidance of the Chinese philosophical pioneers, he not only inherited their reasonable ideas but also he created his own new ones.

Han Fei realized that Lao Zi' Tao was about universal law or general rules; and Li was defined as special law of objective world or beings. Even nowadays the Chinese people would like to say "Be Reasonable", that is, doing or speaking something in reasonable way means with Tao-Li as a right standard. He suggested that the administration authority should follow laws to run the state, and not to violate laws to which all the people would obey. He was invited to be an advisor in Kingdom Chin [in T.F Wade (1818-1896) way to imitate the Chinese character's pronunciation] that united several kingdoms into China later. At first, the First Sovereign Emperor Chi Shi Huang regarded highly him and hoped he would play an important role in making state policies. However, Prime Minister Li Si of the Emperor was jealous of his great talent and managed to falsely incriminate Han Fei by rigging events and evidence. Therefore he was thrown into a prison as a special prisoner. Han Fei could hardly accept such unjust treatment and killed himself pretty soon in 233 BC. His works handed down consist of 50 articles. One of his especially significant point of views is that "No high officials with crime would avoid being punished, and anyone of the common people doing good to the country should be praised."

Even at present Han Fei's ideal is still so fresh that his popular saying has spread all over China for more than 2200 years.