The highest philosophic category of Laozi is Dao. Different from materials, Dao can't be seen or felt. He believed that there is antinomy in materials, such as beauty and ugliness, good and evil, but Dao has no antinomy. Everything on the earth, which can be born and will die, is transience, whereas Dao is immortality. Laozi opposed people to combat. He thought that all materials are apt to transform towards contraries: Good fortune follows upon disaster; disaster lurks within good fortune. Emperors at the beginning of the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD) adopted the theory which let people survive and relax, and respected Laozi ' Wuwei (non-action) as the golden rule to run a country. Later, Han Emperor Wudi attached importance to Confucian learning, and then the status of the Huanglao (the Yellow Emperor and Laozi) ideology declined.

Since the Huanglao ideology was advocated at the beginning of the Han Dynasty, a large number of studies and annotations of Laozi have emerged in the past dynasties. The number of annotation editions is about 700. Moreover, Laozi has been translated into several foreign languages, spreading its influence worldwide.