Reference to Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei (Ài Wèiwei 艾未未). The use of this code lead to the phrase "love the future" being blocked from Weibo search results around June-August 2011.

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 ...

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, ...

This Communist Party slogan was heavily used during the Cultural Revolution, an era in which citizens were incentivized to spy on and even falsely accuse family and neighbors of being disloyal 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.

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

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 ...

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 ...

Ermeiyaoxiaodao (@二枚腰小道): GFW (Great Firewall of China) has blocked all Google services, including Google Scholar, which is essential to research. If you think this is unacceptable, we ...

Columnist and pop-psychologist Tang Yinghong employs his wide-ranging knowledge—and his public WeChat account—to analyze a host of social phenomenon in China: the mass appeal of the pollution ...