Tu Fu is, by universal consent, the greatest poet of the Chinese tradition. In Chinese culture, his works have been virtually canonized because, as the expression of the Chinese mind and moral being in their highest form, their supremacy in literature has been placed beyond merely literary considerations. He himself has been viewed as the embodiment of public-minded dedication and unceasing loyalty, a man who sought all his life, with great constancy, to serve his sovereign and his state. In the literary matters of innovative technique and the establishment of many new subgenres, Tu Fu is also seen as without peer: his precedent was influential equally in setting a poetic rule and in breaking it. In the allusive, imitation-based tradition of classical poetry, his work constituted an endless source of quotation and precedent, the lines studied and imitated, the imagery echoed, the subgenres enlarged.

When the history of T'ang poetry came to be constructed during the Sung dynasty, admiration for Tu Fu's technical brilliance and for the moral excellence of his character combined to raise him from relative obscurity to the apex of T'ang poetry. His work, and that of his contemporary Li Po, defined the boundaries of the High T'ang period, and this period in turn came to be identified with the extraordinary flourishing of culture and political power seen in the middle decades of the eighth century. Although in truth the culture of the elite was to evolve to a higher, more sophisticated, and more subtle level in later dynasties, the literati of those centuries looked back to the T'ang era for their foundation and inspiration.