Even though the period of Kang Youwei's association with Zhu Yixin was not long, it was an important time for Kang. It was during that time that he advocated his theory of New Text Confucianism. But this fact has been neglected and misunderstood by modern scholars, whose viewpoints have generally been limited by Kang's great fame. In this paper, I more closely examine the relationship between Zhu and Kang and the time in which they lived in order to distinguish Zhu's scholarly character and to consider his contribution to classical studies. Based on this, I discuss the argument between Zhu and Kang. In so doing, we can see that Kang was of the younger generation who had not yet come to prominence, while Zhu was already well-known by that time. Furthermore, Zhu's criticism of Kang's New Text studies was based on Song Learning, not Old Text Confucianism. From the perspective of academic paradigms, the argument between Zhu and Kang was not an Old Text versus New Text debate; instead, the Han Learning versus Song Learning debate would be a more appropriate frame of reference in which to consider it. This study provides a new viewpoint from which we can examine the development of late Qing intellectual history.