One area in translation research yet to be fully explored is the translation of canonical works from one language into many. In this article, the author uses examples of Chinese literary texts as translated in the past two centuries into a multiplicity of foreign languages to illustrate how Chinese culture has been exported and received worldwide. Such examples reveal, in the first place, the dynamics of cultural dispersal through translations. Additionally, they permit to re-view the theory of translation as applied to China, taking into account (1) the awareness that Chinese political and cultural influence in the world has continued to decline in the greater part of the twentieth century, and (2) the sinocentric expectation that translations of Chinese texts (and culture) will continue to be carriers of culture in the new global context.