Abstract: Community participation is the core problem of the community governance．During the rapid urbanization process of China, how to solve the problems of community residents participation in lack of motivation is an important problem that plagues community governance. This paper introduces the domestic scholars research from four perspectives on the residents’ participation in community governance: they are structuralism, institutionalism, social capital and culturalism. But these perspectives are not detached from the western model of citizen participation, so it is not feasible to use this bottom-up approach for solving China’s problem. We should develop a new theoretical perspective in combining our own characteristics to better solve the problem of public participation in community governance.