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 quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.”
CDT’s “Quotes of the Year” are a mirror of China’s national mood in ten comments. The five quotes selected in Part One reflected displeasure with coerced rosy perspectives on China’s economy; despair over senseless deaths observed in silence; the enduring importance of Tiananmen remembrances; disillusionment with the country’s “Red” turn under Xi; and anger over the raising of the national retirement age.
The five quotes that make up Part Two address a nation grappling with humiliation and hatred, widespread cynicism about the economy and the stock market, the hypocritical censorship of sometimes impenetrable internet slang, and a popular yearning for freedom of expression. The quotes—all translated from Chinese—are representative of broader strains of commentary that CDT editors have observed over the past year. They are organized chronologically, with a brief explanation for context after the original quote:
#6: On The Alternate “National Humiliations” of September 18
September 18: “The anniversary of September 18 as a ‘Day of National Humiliation’ [referring to the September 18, 1931 ‘Mukden Incident’] has been redefined: the 2022 Guizhou bus crash and the 2024 murder of Japanese school children are the true ‘national humiliations’ that occurred on this date.” – Social media user "Munntein," commenting on how the Party-state has sought to suppress the memory of more recent tragedies that occured on September 18
On September 18, 1931 a bomb exploded along the route of the South Manchurian Railway outside of Mukden, the Manchu-derived name for present-day Shenyang. Nobody was hurt, and rail travel was not impeded, but Japan seized on the incident as a pretext to invade Manchuria, claiming that it was necessary to protect its economic interests there. The attack, actually a false-flag gambit by Japanese officers, was arguably the beginning of World War II. To this day, the Party-state puts out a flood of propaganda on September 18 beseeching citizens not to forget the “national humiliation” of territorial dismemberment and Japanese occupation that followed the “Mukden Incident.” More recent disasters that have taken place on September 18 have not received the same treatment. Instead, the Party-state has sought to suppress their memory. On September 18, 2022, 27 people were killed in a late-night bus crash in Guizhou. The victims were being sent to a remote quarantine facility scores of miles outside the provincial capital Guiyang, allegedly to help local authorities achieve their “zero-COVID” case quota. This year on September 18, a 10-year-old Japanese boy was fatally stabbed outside of a Shenzhen Japanese school. The deadly assault, one of the many shocking attacks this year, spurred a massive outpouring of sympathy and soul-searching on the Chinese internet that included criticism of Chinese short-video platforms for allowing the proliferation of extreme anti-Japanese content. Many of these reflections were removed from WeChat and Weibo by censors.
#7: On Miraculous Economic Recoveries, Perhaps Too Good To Be True?
September 26: “It took Japan 30 years to clamber out of its recession. We were a bit faster: it only took us three days.” – A Chinese netizen’s snarky comment on a likely inadequate economic stimulus package put forward by the government.
In late September, China’s national government announced a series of measures intended to boost the economy. The measures spurred a “mind boggling” rally in the stock market. Whether the September stimulus measure—and those that have followed—will succeed in righting the proverbial economic ship remains an open question, with notable analysts such as Anne Stevenson-Yang writing that Xi Jinping has favored social control over efficiency gains since taking office in 2012, and thus seems unlikely to desire real economic reform that might endanger that control. Many in China, as evidenced by the quote above, seem equally skeptical.
#8: On Banditry, Financial and Otherwise
October 7: “You then return the money to the rich, and we split the rest 30/70!” – Zhihu user “Moon Pupil” quoting a scene from “Let The Bullets Fly” in which the antagonist explains how to defraud the poor through duplicitous taxation schemes.
The rally in China’s stock market did not last. The “mind boggling” stock market rally was shortly followed by a sobering crash. For one Zhihu user, the wild fluctuations brought to mind a scene from the Chinese Western “Let The Bullets Fly,” in which an evil advisor played be the actor Ge You instructs the protagonist, a bandit-turned-county magistrate played by Jiang Wen, on a scheme to make money off the poor. (The actor is a favorite muse of Chinese meme-makers—see “lying flat”—even as he makes millions suing them for using his likeness without permission.) Ge You’s character advises: “First, befriend the rich and tax them more. Once they’ve paid up, you tax the poor. You then return the money to the rich, and we split the rest 30/70!” China’s volatile stock market has given birth to many viral terms, with “chives” being the most enduring. Originally coined to describe those who reinvest after initial losses in the stock market, “chives” now denotes generally conformist-passive types willing to allow themselves to be abused by the system. According to a briefly viral and later-censored WeChat post from May 2024, these "chives" offer a rich harvest for the gangster-like “bureaucratic cliques” that set China’s economic policy.
#9: On Abuses of Language
October 19: “Autocracy is called ‘democratic dictatorship.’ Illegally withholding wages is called ‘greater, faster, better and cheaper.’ Suffering is called ‘dynamic clearance.’ Losing your job was first called ‘being made redundant,’ but is now called ‘flexible employment.’ Political disasters are called natural disasters. The tortured euphemisms are endless. Infringing on the right to procreate is called ‘family planning.’ State capitalism is called ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ Going backwards is called ‘not forgetting your original intention.’ I wonder which smarmy character invented all these ‘abuses of language!’” – Social media user "LanceXLiang," on a joint Cyberspace Administration of China and Ministry of Education crackdown on “irregular and uncivilized language and text,” i.e. China’s vibrant online slang culture
The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top internet regulator, periodically launches “Clear and Bright” campaigns designed to “clean up” social media and streaming platforms. The latest such crackdown, launched in October, was targeted at the obscurantist, variant, homophonic, abbreviated, and downright odd slang that characterizes much online conversation in China. Such slang is both a reflection of global internet culture and a form of resistance to censorship. Netizens were none too pleased with the campaign, arguing that the Party itself is no stranger to euphemism and jargon, citing a collage of COVID-era terms that are impenetrable to the uninitiated: dynamic clearing, silent management, itinerary codes, spatial-temporal companions, etc. Seeing the comedic potential in the Party’s often tortured use of language, netizens have created "chengyu for Xi Jinping’s New Era." These idiomatic expressions, often formed of four Chinese characters, are a humorous way to highlight recent examples of bureaucratic malice or incompetence.
#10: On Halloween, Soviet Jokes, and Cultural Invasion
October 25: "When they set up Confucius Institutes abroad, they say it is ‘encouraging cultural exchange.’ When they ban Halloween here, they say it is ‘preventing cultural invasion.’" – Netizen “Watchman on the never-ending night shift,” commenting on a nationwide Halloween crackdown
Last year, Halloween in Shanghai was marked by a freewheeling air of tolerance that surprised and delighted many across China. Some commentators, though, predicted that authorities would be unlikely to allow a repeat of such scenes in 2024. Those prognostications proved correct. This year, Halloween in Shanghai was marked by a massive police presence and stringent online censorship of photos of costumes. Some nationalist commentators hailed the crackdown on “the invasion of Western culture,” but many in China bemoaned the loss of the festive holiday. One writer suggested that Halloween costumes had become China’s version of “Soviet jokes,” and lamented that one of the last remaining ways for Chinese young people “to let loose and express their remaining imagination and creativity” had become “just another foolish dream.” Some nevertheless found another outlet in the short-lived but widely celebrated phenomenon of mass overnight bike rides from Zhenghzhou to Kaifeng.
