Abstract: In the past，China’s domestic research on the non-profit sector was mainly based on the idea that social organizations reflect the society，and has made a lot of progress in study of the state-society relationship. But this idea is increasingly challenged by the difficulty of explaining the reality. Due to the process of Chinese modernization and the continuous driving force of the folk society，China’s social form has experienced three stages of development from simple to three-dimensional and then to extensive participation. In this process，the public welfare sector has attracted the widest range of social subjects to participate in its public interest goals，and has generated abundant practices of diverse social subjects and extensive relationships；it has become a huge vanguard force in promoting social development. This trend is pushed to a new height by the rise of Internet public welfare. The former research idea that social organizations reflect the society can hardly explain the current social situation in which the subject is more diverse，the configuration is more three-dimensional，and the connection is more universal. It is necessary to promote the research of state-society relationship to adopt the idea that social public welfare reflects the society for accurate and in-depth interpretation of the current state-society relationship. The change of research ideas is not a negation of the previous idea，but an adaptation of it to the times and a powerful development.

Key words: state-society relationship, social development, social public welfare, social organization, Chinese path to modernization