Matthew Arnold and His Chinese Disciples: A Study on Early Reception of Matthew Arnold in China

The early reception of Matthew Arnold by the Xueheng School played a formative role in shaping the trajectory of Arnold studies in China. This article traces the contours of Arnold’s Chinese reception beginning in the early decades of the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on the pivotal role played by the Xueheng School. Many of its members admired Arnold’s cultural conservatism, appropriating his critiques of modernity as a means of resisting the radical cultural agenda of the New Culture Movement, which sought to transform traditional Chinese culture through the wholesale assimilation of Western ideas. For ideological reasons, scholarly engagement with Arnold was effectively suspended for nearly two decades following the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. During this period, his works saw minimal translation or critical discussion. However, Arnold’s reception underwent a marked transformation in the post-Mao era, particularly following the implementation of the Reform and Opening-Up policies. From the 1980s onward, Chinese scholars began to reengage with Arnold’s oeuvre—not only his poetry but also his theory of culture, social criticism, and educational philosophy. This renewed engagement significantly deepened Chinese understandings of Arnold as a poet, literary critic, social commentator, and religious thinker. Over the course of the past century, Arnold’s reception in China has passed through several distinct phases: initially, in the 1920s and 1930s, as a voice for cultural conservatism aligned with the Xueheng School; subsequently, as a paradigmatic literary critic; and most recently, as an essential figure in university curricula in the twenty-first century. These shifting receptions of Arnold reflect broader intellectual and ideological transformations in Chinese literary and cultural studies, mirroring the changing contours of modern Chinese history itself.