Abstract: The modern Chinese economic thought has undergone a transition from traditional and pre-scientific economic thought to modern and scientific economics. The methodology of the Lakatos Scientific Revolution Program is conducive to understanding the paradigm shift of economic thought. Through the construction of economic thought evolution mechanism, this paper analyzes the transformation of modern Chinese social economic thoughts, points out the possible direction of China’s modern social economic thought changes, and illustrates the complexity of social economic thought forms: overseas students, overseas returned economists, missionaries and other scientific communities are closely related with the evolution of social economic thought forms. To construct an economic theory system with Chinese characteristics requires insisting on the local economic ideology and culture tradition, being rooted in China’s unique problem consciousness, and facing the actual economic problems.

Key words: modern China; economic thought; economics; scientific community; paradigm shift