Mass culture has been the arch-object of Cultural Studies both in the West and China since the day Cultural Studies first emerged. As was iterated above, mass culture studies in contemporary China (mainly in the Chinese mainland) arose between the late 1980s and the early 1990s and came to its heyday in the early 21st century. This chapter focuses on the paradigms of mass culture studies in contemporary China, including the Frankfurt School's critical theory, modernization theory and political economy.