Abstract: Since the transitional period between the Qing dynasty and the Republic of China, literature has been regarded as an efficient instrument to arouse public awareness, to revitalize citizens, and to remold the country in the context of "Western learning spreading to the East." Back then, various reformists and revolutionaries, as well as pioneers of the New Culture Movement, devoted themselves to the enterprise of literature. As a result, literature became a key concept frequently appearing in the Chinese society, followed by a massive occurrence of literary practice throughout the country. As a conceptual product of "Western learning spreading to the East," the term wenxue, which means literature in Chinese, was coined in response to the zeitgeist and was highly significant to the establishment of Chinese literature afterwards.
For over one hundred years, the term wenxue has evolved from a "key word" to a "structural word" and played a categorical role in the structural transformation of the Chinese communicative system. The practitioners of Chinese New Literature, on the one hand, incorporated different genres such as fiction, poetry, and drama into the denotation of literature; on the other hand, they created new concepts, such as "ancient literature," "contemporary literature," "Han literature," "literature of minority ethnic groups," "world literature," "folk literature," and "oral literature," according to the basic meaning of literature. These new concepts constituted the foundation on which further literary reforms came to fruition.

Key words: literature, terminological transformation, modern China, the construction of New Literature