The change of values which occurred in modern China, a course developing ideologically around the controversies on such categories as "Heaven and man, " "group and individual, " and "righteousness and profit" (or "profit a nd desire"), was closely related to a transformation of the traditional learned class into mo dernized intellectuals in social life. From Gong Zizhen onward, who lived in the late per iod of the Qing Dynasty, heretics of traditional scholar-officials, "intellectuals in treaty port cities, " returned students and students in new-type schools, became principal members of value reforms one after another. With a division of traditional men o f letters and a renewal of values, scholar-officials declined and even disappeared, while new-type intellectuals came into being.