Li Si
After Qin Shi Huang became emperor Li Si persuaded him to suppress intellectual dissent. Li Si believed that books regarding things such as medicine, agriculture and prophecy could be ignored but political books were dangerous in public hands. It was hard to make progress and change the country with the opposition of so many "free thinking" scholars. As a result, only the state should keep political books, and only the state run schools should be allowed to educate political scholars. Li Si himself penned the edict ordering the destruction of historical records and literature in 213 BC, including key Confucian texts, which he thought detrimental to the welfare of the state. It is commonly thought that 460 Confucian scholars were buried alive in the well-known historical event "Burning Books and Burying Confucianists" ().