Kang Youwei (1858–1927), along with Liang, was one of the most important reformist thinkers of the late Qing period.

Kang Youwei

Kang met Liang Qichao in Beijing in 1890, after his first failed attempt to pass the highest level of the imperial examinations. Kang introduced the younger Liang to a bold teleological reinterpretation of Confucian thought, inspired by some of the same scholarship that influenced Wei Yuan. Liang went on to become one of Kang’s star pupils at his radical school, the Cottage in the Woods Academy.