This article argues that the concept of “chiefdom”, largely derived from cultural anthropology, is crucial to understanding the formation of early Chinese states but is often misunderstood or ignored in Chinese archaeology and historiography. By highlighting China's strong tradition of textual study and its tendency to rely on historical records over theoretical models, the author contends that progress in exploring the origin of Chinese civilization requires an open embrace of modern social-science theory. Surveying Western scholarship on chiefdoms, the article demonstrates that “chiefdom” can matifest great diversity, with cycles of growth, fragmentation, and varied forms of inequality. Yet many Chinese interpretations conflate this stage of social evolution either with Morgan's tribal confederation or with quasi-states, leading to confusion about the nature and timing of political centralization. The author critiques such misunderstandings, insisting that without a fuller grasp of anthropological theory, Chinese scholars risk shoehorning archaeological data into preconceived categories. Chiefdom theory, on the other hand, when applied correctly, clarified  how complex societies bridge egalitarian tribes and early states, and helps identify the dynamic processes that sometimes culminate in stable polities and sometimes unravel. The article ends by calling on China’s scholarly community to adopt a global perspective and rigorously test universal social principles against China's vast archaeological data, thereby advancing our knowledge of early Chinese states.