By situating it in the new context of the subtle struggles between Kangxi and his favorite official LI Guang-di, this paper re-explains Kangxi’s decision of promoting the position of ZHU Xi in the ceremony of worshipping Confucius as part of the emperor’s efforts to pacify Li. Based upon the long ignored source materials, it questions the traditional explanation held by such famous scholars as QIAN Mu and GE Zhao-guang, which treats the event as part of imperial Manchu’s suppressive policies toward the Han Chinese elites. This paper argues that such an explanation has read the relationship between the government and the intellectuals under the totalitarian regime into that between Kangxi and the Han Chinese elites and ignored the significant differences between these two kinds of relationships.