This chapter analyses the interconnectedness between the task of translation and the agendas of reform and revolution in late-Qing Chinese political and intellectual culture. The first section gives an overview of how ‘translation’ was connected with enlightenment projects and political agendas in each stage of late-Qing China. The second section examines the translation in post-1894 China with an emphasis on the role of translation in the shaping of intellectual culture. The third section uses the ‘transformative translation’ of evolutionism in post-1894 China as a case study to reveal how political mobilisation in nationalist, reformist, and revolutionist agendas served as a filter through which Western ideas were selected and re-created. The fourth section aims to re-evaluate the strong implication of political activism in post-1894 translation and Chinese evolutionism in terms of Asad’s theory of ‘cultural translation,’ Liu’s theory concerning the ‘agency’ of the host language, and Lienhardt’s theory pertaining to the ‘further potentiality’ of the translator’s language and thought.