The concept of "rights" is the kernel and basis of modern liberalism and jurisprudence. It implies the legitimacy of the autonomy of the individual. This essay is aimed at exploring the process of the acceptance and the usage of this concept in the formation of modern Chinese culture. We know that in Chinese the word "quanli" means both power and interest. And it is no coincidence that Late-Qing Chinese intellectuals' awareness of the legitimacy of the autonomy of the nation (the community) actually came from their efforts to strengthen the nation's power and protect its interests. This is why "quanli" was used to translate "rights". From 1900 to 1915, the scope of the concept of autonomy was being so expanded that it now covered both the concept of the nation (the community) and that of the individual. During this period, the meanings of "quanli" was closer to the meanings of "rights" in the West than it had been before. In Chinese culture, the concept of "legitimacy" is closely connected with morals while political culture is inseparable from moral judgment. Therefore, it is hard for the Chinese to accept any notion that legitimacy is not an equivalent of morality. New Culture Movement was the vital period that shaped the landscape of modern Chinese political culture. We choose La Jeunesse as the object of our case study in which the usage of the concept "quanli" was analyzed and categorized to provide necessary statistics. Then, a comparison was made of the usage of "quanli" in La Jeunesse with its usage in literature published in late Qing and the 1911 Revolution. The comparison shows that the concept "quanli" was getting more and more moralized and even became a new standard of morals. It was this evolution of meanings that caused some Chinese intellectuals as represented by the writers with La Jeunesse to accept Marxism and reject liberalism. The research methods we employed take the form of an analysis of both the meanings of the keyword "quanli" and its statistics. And we put the result of this analysis within the context of intellectual history for studying or the formation of modem Chinese political culture. In this study, we need to clarify the meanings of certain important concepts in different cultural value systems and explore their translations across cultures. The influence of significant historical events in modern Chinese history on the evolution of the meanings of these concepts is also a factor to be taken into account in the course of doing this study.