As a popular music genre and significant Western cultural export, jazz music arrived in China during the 1920s. However, previous research has not paid sufficient critical attention to China’s experience of jazz music prior to the 1980s, and there is still a paucity of research into jazz education in China. I will analyse the current state of jazz education in mainland China and the underlying processes and history of its development. The work is significant both in terms of providing new insights into musical and cultural life in mainland China, but also more widely in considering the international transmission of music and music education into different cultures. This research aims to adopt a two-stage approach, rereading the origins and development of jazz and jazz education in China since the 1920s through the optic of history, geography and cultural policy, before using this foundation to reread modern Chinese jazz education. My investigation will employ a combination of fieldwork, involving data collection and analysis of interviews I have conducted, observations, and questionnaires, as well as an examination of Chinese and foreign literature since the 1980s. The research will also be the first to periodise contemporary jazz education in China, building an empirical and methodological framework which may be of benefit to future scholars investigating this area. The three stages include the starting point of contemporary jazz education in China (1978-1993); the period of rapid development of contemporary jazz education (1993-2005); and the mature period of jazz education (2005-2020).