Abstract: Being occupied indicated a separation of “min” (people) from “guo” (state). After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, the citizens of the Republic detained in North China were reduced to conquered people overnight. “胜国之民，何言政事，何云国民？” (People of a conquered nation, how could they discuss politics affairs, and how could they assert themselves as a nation?) The concept of “guo min” (nation) happened to serve as the entry point of Zhou Zuoren to deliberate the issues of Chinese thought in the later period of the Japanese occupation. From his two speeches titled “Chinese National Thought” to The Issues of Chinese Thought included in his collections, Zhou Zuoren’s diagnosis of the national thought turned from inward criticism to outward contradiction. The denunciation of the “national character” was in essence a set of enlightenment discourse, and the excavation of the deep-rooted bad habits of the nation by Zhou Zuoren during the “May Fourth” period performed conversely as a stumbling block to his change of thought in the fourties. The “guo — min” (state — people) separated in the real world stayed intact in Zhou Zuoren’s articles, which could be explained by a comeback of the racial revolution in the late Qing Dynasty but also should be attributed to the mere nominal existence of “the Republic of China” in the occupied area.