The classic theory in explaining the motivation of collective events is resource mobilization，which is the rise of collective actions may probably reflect a rise in public’s concerns of economic interests during the social transformation period. While some recent research proposed that justice-related morality has been increasingly emphasized with the social change in China，resulting in more justice-driven collective actions. The present study aims to test these two comparative explanations at the macro level by using Google Books Ngram Viewer，tracking the changing concerns in justice-related concepts and economic exchanges. The analysis revealed that（a）with the increase of economic growth indexing by GDP per capita，the concerns in justice-related concepts increased while the concerns of economics declined.（b）The increasing amount of collective actions was accompanied by the increasing intellectual curiosity in justice and the declining economic concerns. These results validate our assumption that the recent collective actions are more likely driven by the increasing justice concerns with the development of society，but not driven by the economic concerns.