Abstract: Inrigidly stratified ancient China，equality was only some“reckless”individuals’marginal call；it，however， turned out to an axiom of mankind in the minds of intellectual elites such as Kang Youwei and Tan Sitong since the Opium War. The lofty position of equality was the result of the serious unequal positions between China and Western powers. Kang and Tan admired the advanced cannons and warships，political systems and ideas of Western powers so much that they generously accepted their concepts of democracy，freedom，and equality. They did not accept the concept of equality like John Locke’ s“tabula rasa”，though.Instead，they tried to find basis from the ancient traditional Chinese ideological sources. Due to the absence of individualist tradition and the underdevelopment of capitalist commodity economy in China，Kang and Tan misread equality in its modern sense. Nevertheless，ever since them，equality has attracted more and more attention of the mainstreamelites and become animportant part of China’ s modern spirit.

Key words: Kang Youwei, Tan Sitong, equality, misreading