Abstract: In the early twentieth century, nationalism, which originated from western countries, spread rapidly in China. Two highly influential theories on nationalism were:civil nationalism from France, which focused on citizenship, and cultural nationalism from Germany, which emphasized common culture and faith in the same ethnic group. Under the influence of these western theories, more ideas of nationalism emerged, such as civil nationalism and state nationalism, multi-ethnic nationalism and single-ethnic nationalism, cultural nationalism and anti-tradition nationalism. These ideas provided a framework for later research on nationalism. The prevalence of state nationalism, the pluralistic integral pattern of different ethnic groups in China, the duration of anti-tradition nationalism, and the vicissitude of cultural nationalism henceforth all showed profound historical influence of these ideas.