Gongyang Zhuan

Gongyang Zhuan scholarship was reinvigorated in late Ming dynasty and became a major source of inspiration for Chinese reformers from the eighteenth to early twentieth century.

[2] Gongyang Zhuan argues that the Spring and Autumn Annals is not merely a history, but a magnum opus of Confucius' ideas regarding sociopolitical order.

The primary assumption of Gongyang Zhuan is that Confucius authored the Spring and Autumn Annals in order to criticize the politics of his time and set a constitutional guideline for future generations.

With Emperor Wu of Han's adoption of Dong's proposal to formally establish Confucianism as the state ideology, the power and influence of the Gongyang School increased significantly.

Later, Dong Zhongshu authored Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals, Interactions Between Heaven and Mankind and Strange Calamities of Yin and Yang, in which he popularized his mysticism interpretation of Gongyang Zhuan.

Nonetheless, among officials, Gongyang School was seen as a vital political classic that provided ideological basis and historical precedents in governing, and was cited during policy debates.

In the opinion of the Han scholar and official He Xiu [zh], the Gongyang Zhuan's achievement is its appraisal of the Spring and Autumn Annals to expound the "great way of Confucianism" through the use of subtle and profound language.

During the Qing dynasty the study of textual criticism flourished with successive scholars researching the Gongyang Zhuan and reinvigorating its ideas.

This re-evaluation of the work was probably a response to the massive social and political changes of the period which caused scholars to reassess the dominant official interpretation of Confucianism.

In particular, Kang Youwei's interpretation helped facilitated the widespread doubt on the Old Texts among intellectuals, and thus creating a sympathetic audience for his reformist ideas, which later became well known in Hundred Days' Reform.