Abstract: The cultural conservatism is one of the most important doctrines of cultural construction during the social transformation in China in the 20th century. Theoretically, it always insists that the construction of modern Chinese culture should be based on inheriting and transforming traditions so as to maintain the main characteristics of the nationality. In this way, the cultural conservatism is completely opposite to the cultural radicalism, which aims at “Westernization”. As a modern cultural thought, the cultural conservatism distinguishes itself from other obstinate conservatisms for its inheritance of the tradition is based on a modern self-consciousness. The performance of its representative schools such as nationalism, the Orient Culture Clique, Xueheng School and modern Confucianism shows that the contribution of the cultural conservatism mainly lies in the systematical construction of theories and modern cultural philosophy rather than in social practice, which explains well why it has been marginalized for a long time in modern society.