The study aims to develop a comparative classification of topic sentences in early classical Archaic Chinese (the V-III centuries BC), late Literary Chinese (the late XVII - the early XVIII century) and modern Chinese. Scientific novelty of the study is accounted for by the fact that the classification of topic sentences is created based on the material of not one, but three different periods in the development of the Chinese language. As a result of the study, the researcher has proved that topicalisation mechanisms are common to sentences in Chinese belonging to different periods and also has shown that it is impossible to analyse Chinese sentences by topic components. The terms “topic - commentary” should be used in the process of analysing the presence (absence) of a direct semantic link between the subject group and the predicate core. These terms are absolutely not applicable for syntactic analysis.