The essay is aimed at investigating the formation and disappearance of public sphere by studying the evolution in the meaning of the terms “qun” (community), “shehui” (society), and “shehuizhuyi” (socialism) in modern Chinese history. In traditional Chinese society, public sphere failed to come into existence though village autonomy did exist below the county level where the gentry had dominance. In late nineteenth century, under the impact of the west, “qun” emerged out of various traditional political terms and became a guiding principle of the society. This phenomenon was closely related to the fact that some intellectuals used “Jinwen Jingxue” (the Modern Text Shool of Confucian classics) as a guideline for the 1898 Reform Movement. As the notion of reform was superseded by that of revolution, “shehui” took the place of “qun” and became the equivalent of the western term “society”. This marked the debut of public sphere in modern Chinese history. And the subsequent rise of socialism could be seen as the subordination of private realm to public realm. This heralded the expansion of state power and the intensification of bureaucratization in Chinese society in early twentieth century. In this essay, we not only make use of the analytical method(s) of intellectual history but also draw on the study of linguistics. By employing quantitative analysis as our research method, we hope that this study can throw a new light on the formation of modern Chinese political concepts.