This paper aims to explore and characterize women's rights during the period between the late Qing and the May Fourth Era. By reviewing the literature focusing on women's rights and analyzing their key arguments, this paper suggests that nationalism, the imitation of men, multi-origins and the debates about good-wife-and-virtuous-motherism as the characteristics, which played significant roles in the shaping of women's rights in modern China. As a consequence of the collapse of the Qing government, the alterations of women's biological inferiority and intellectual inability were equated by male intellectuals with the ways of boosting up the nation. Nationalism was an essential part of the propagation of concerns about women and their rights. As to the imitation of men, it could be found that women had the tendency of wearing short hair and man-style clothes and acting as men did so as to fight for their rights equivalent to men's. It is also argued that the promulgation of women's rights was derived from diverse sources, including native thoughts, the dedication of male intellectuals as well as the theoretical background, thoughts and influences from Western feminism. Moreover, the debates about good-wife-and-virtuous-motherism were identified as a feature in the process of constructing Chinese women's rights, with the fact that there was controversy evolving and growing with it over time. In addition, this research also draws attention to further reflections associated with the development of women's rights.