This article explores the conditions and limitations of the reading public in the Late Qing. After tracing the history of ”public” and the conditions of public as social fact, the author found that once the Chinese people in pre-modernity had an attempt to act as public, they would suffer triple difficulties: lack of knowing the public affairs, awareness of political subjects and the way to form public opinion. Fortunately, the rising of newspaper after 1896 had gradually changed the existing communication system which made the public possible in the authoritarian regime.