{"id":702992,"date":"2024-12-19T15:47:53","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T23:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=702992"},"modified":"2024-12-19T15:47:53","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T23:47:53","slug":"cdt-2024-year-end-roundup-quotes-of-the-year-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2024\/12\/cdt-2024-year-end-roundup-quotes-of-the-year-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"CDT 2024 Year-End Roundup: Quotes of the Year (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content<\/a> (Chinese<\/a>) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year\u2019s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, \u201cPeople of the Year,\u201d and CDT\u2019s \u201c2024 Editors\u2019 Picks.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n CDT\u2019s \u201cQuotes of the Year\u201d are a mirror of China\u2019s national mood in ten comments<\/strong><\/a>. The five quotes selected in Part One<\/a> reflected displeasure with coerced rosy perspectives on China\u2019s economy; despair over senseless deaths observed in silence; the enduring importance of Tiananmen remembrances; disillusionment with the country\u2019s \u201cRed\u201d turn under Xi; and anger over the raising of the national retirement age. <\/p>\n 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\u2014all translated from Chinese\u2014are 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:<\/p>\n #6: On The Alternate \u201cNational Humiliations\u201d of September 18<\/strong><\/p>\n September 18<\/strong>: \u201cThe anniversary of September 18 as a \u2018Day of National Humiliation\u2019 [referring to the September 18, 1931 \u2018Mukden Incident\u2019] has been redefined: the 2022 Guizhou bus crash and the 2024 murder of Japanese school children are the true \u2018national humiliations\u2019 that occurred on this date.\u201d – 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 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n On September 18, 1931 a bomb exploded along the route of the South Manchurian Railway outside of Mukden<\/a>, 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<\/a> beseeching citizens not to forget the \u201cnational humiliation\u201d of territorial dismemberment and Japanese occupation that followed the \u201cMukden Incident.\u201d 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<\/a> in Guizhou. The victims were being sent to a remote quarantine facility scores of miles outside the provincial capital Guiyang<\/a>, allegedly to help local authorities achieve their \u201czero-COVID\u201d case quota. This year on September 18, a 10-year-old Japanese boy was fatally stabbed<\/a> outside of a Shenzhen Japanese school. The deadly assault, one of the many shocking attacks this year<\/a>, spurred a massive outpouring of sympathy and soul-searching on the Chinese internet<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n #7: On Miraculous Economic Recoveries, Perhaps Too Good To Be True?<\/strong><\/p>\n September 26<\/strong>: \u201cIt took Japan 30 years to clamber out of its recession. We were a bit faster: it only took us three days.\u201d – A Chinese netizen\u2019s snarky comment on a likely inadequate economic stimulus package put forward by the government. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In late September, China\u2019s national government announced a series of measures intended to boost the economy<\/a>. The measures spurred a \u201cmind boggling\u201d rally in the stock market<\/a>. Whether the September stimulus measure\u2014and those that have followed<\/a>\u2014will succeed in righting the proverbial economic ship remains an open question, with notable analysts such as Anne Stevenson-Yang<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n #8: On Banditry, Financial and Otherwise<\/strong> <\/p>\n October 7<\/strong>: \u201cYou then return the money to the rich, and we split the rest 30\/70!\u201d – Zhihu user \u201cMoon Pupil\u201d quoting a scene from \u201cLet The Bullets Fly\u201d in which the antagonist explains how to defraud the poor through duplicitous taxation schemes. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The rally in China\u2019s stock market did not last. The \u201cmind boggling\u201d stock market rally was shortly followed by a sobering crash<\/a>. For one Zhihu user, the wild fluctuations brought to mind a scene from the Chinese Western \u201cLet The Bullets Fly,\u201d 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\u2014see \u201clying flat<\/a>\u201d\u2014even as he makes millions suing them<\/a> for using his likeness without permission.) Ge You’s character advises: \u201cFirst, befriend the rich and tax them more. Once they\u2019ve paid up, you tax the poor. You then return the money to the rich, and we split the rest 30\/70!\u201d China\u2019s volatile stock market has given birth to many viral terms, with \u201cchives\u201d being the most enduring. Originally coined<\/a> to describe those who reinvest after initial losses in the stock market, \u201cchives\u201d now denotes generally conformist-passive types<\/a> 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 \u201cbureaucratic cliques\u201d<\/a> that set China\u2019s economic policy.<\/p>\n #9: On Abuses of Language<\/strong><\/p>\n October 19<\/strong>: \u201cAutocracy is called \u2018democratic dictatorship<\/a>.\u2019 Illegally withholding wages is called \u2018greater, faster, better and cheaper<\/a>.\u2019 Suffering is called \u2018dynamic clearance<\/a>.\u2019 Losing your job was first called \u2018being made redundant,\u2019 but is now called \u2018flexible employment.\u2019 Political disasters are called natural disasters. The tortured euphemisms are endless. Infringing on the right to procreate is called \u2018family planning.\u2019 State capitalism is called \u2018socialism with Chinese characteristics.\u2019 Going backwards<\/a> is called \u2018not forgetting your original intention<\/a>.\u2019 I wonder which smarmy character invented all these \u2018abuses of language!\u2019\u201d – Social media user "LanceXLiang," on a joint Cyberspace Administration of China and Ministry of Education crackdown on \u201cirregular and uncivilized language and text,\u201d i.e. China\u2019s vibrant online slang culture <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country\u2019s top internet regulator, periodically launches \u201cClear and Bright\u201d campaigns<\/a> designed to \u201cclean up\u201d social media and streaming platforms. The latest such crackdown, launched in October,<\/a> 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<\/a>. 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<\/a> to the uninitiated: dynamic clearing, silent management, itinerary codes, spatial-temporal companions, etc. Seeing the comedic potential in the Party\u2019s often tortured use of language, netizens have created "chengyu<\/em> for Xi Jinping\u2019s New Era."<\/a> These idiomatic expressions, often formed of four Chinese characters, are a humorous way to highlight recent examples of bureaucratic malice or incompetence. <\/p>\n #10: On Halloween, Soviet Jokes, and Cultural Invasion<\/strong> <\/p>\n October 25<\/strong>: "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 \u201cWatchman on the never-ending night shift,\u201d commenting on a nationwide Halloween crackdown <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Last year, Halloween in Shanghai was marked by a freewheeling air of tolerance<\/a> 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<\/a> of photos of costumes. Some nationalist commentators hailed the crackdown<\/a> on \u201cthe invasion of Western culture,\u201d but many in China bemoaned the loss of the festive holiday. One writer suggested that Halloween costumes had become China\u2019s version of \u201cSoviet jokes<\/a>,\u201d and lamented that one of the last remaining ways for Chinese young people \u201cto let loose and express their remaining imagination and creativity\u201d had become \u201cjust another foolish dream.\u201d Some nevertheless found another outlet in the short-lived but widely celebrated phenomenon of mass overnight bike rides from Zhenghzhou to Kaifeng<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, \u201cPeople of the Year,\u201d and CDT\u2019s \u201c2024 Editors\u2019 Picks.\u201d CDT\u2019s \u201cQuotes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1093,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[99,116,20,2,14744,5,4202],"tags":[18533,5918,53,1434,1343,18027,7104,16818,7457,70,1922,16425,4641,4667,2201,8444,388,8208,14572,5737],"class_list":["post-702992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cdt-highlights","category-world","category-culture","category-economy","category-level-2-article","category-society","category-translation","tag-2024-year-end","tag-anti-japan","tag-censorship","tag-china-and-japan","tag-china-japan","tag-chinese-history","tag-cultural-exchange","tag-cyberspace-administration-of-china","tag-economic-stimulus-plan","tag-japan","tag-japan-military","tag-japanese-relations","tag-manchu","tag-online-public-opinion","tag-slang","tag-soviet-union","tag-stock-market","tag-translation-excerpt","tag-western-culture","tag-western-holidays","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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