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In the course of the 17th century, discourses on friendship in China increased. Partly linked to the decay of traditional structures and in particular of family structures that served as the basis for the social functioning of the empire, they propose to reassess the friendly bond in the political organization. He Xinyin (1517-1579) is in this regard one of the most innovative and radical thinkers.Through the reading of some major essays collected in his complete works, the paper aims at deciphering the reassessment of friendship and its subversive dimension by this author, and at showing how such a redefinition could instill in the Chinese culture of the 17th century and beyond new subjective relationships where the individual emerges as a primary entity as well as ideas of freedom of speech.