Abstract: The idea of civil society was born and developed in western society.It was revived at the end of the 20^th century in later period of last cen and almost formed a wave of global political thought. Recently, the idea of civil society has caused great attention from the political field in China; some scholars raise Socialism Civil Society as a mode to analyze the social process of China in a period of transformation. The aims of this paper are to make clear how the idea of civil society changes and why it is popular now, and discuss the intrinsic relations between civil society and market economy, democracy politics and gradual reforms to provide some helpful reference to the social development of China in a period of transformation.