In December 2023, we published a revised edition of the Lexicon as an eBook, which includes updated entries for 104 of the most salient terms we have collected over the past 20 years. Please ...

Code name for Zhou Yongkang, former public security chief and close ally of fallen Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai; a popular brand of instant noodles. The kāng 康 in the brand name is the ...

Coded support for the Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.

As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding ...

Chinese social media has been filled with discussion of Bu Xiaohua, a woman in Shanxi province who was recently reunited with her father and other relatives 13 years after she went missing. Ms. Bu, ...

CDT’s year-end roundups of memorable quotes and censored terms have both highlighted public frustration with the state of the economy and the government’s efforts to enforce positive perceptions of it ...

Code for June 4, 1989, the date of the crackdown on pro-democracy protests around Tiananmen Square. (The military operation began late on the night of June 3.) Ordinarily the event is referred to ...

A self-deprecating description of individual investors who re-invest in the stock market after initial losses; also used to address youth disillusionment and endemic government corruption.

Young, nationalistic netizen who attacks the social media accounts of people perceived to have slighted China, typically as part of a large "expedition" across the Great Firewall to Facebook.

Teng Biao, born on August 2, 1973 in Jilin Province, is a human rights lawyer, activist, and former professor who is dedicated to exposing China’s human rights abuses and fighting against its ...

Vague descriptor that is often used as code for towing the Party line. “Positive energy” was meme-ified in China during the 2010 trial of Song Shanmu, the founder of a well-known vocational ...