Annual buzzword selection highlights changes in China, world

BEIJING -- Multiple organizations in China released the most popular Chinese characters and phrases of 2024 on Friday, offering insight into the evolving trends of the country and the world.

On the list of 2024 buzzwords for China, the character "zhi", or "intelligence" in English, and the term "new quality productive forces" claimed the top spots for their respective categories.

Also featured are characters related to integration, safety, and stability, along with expressions like "Black Myth: Wukong," the internationally acclaimed Chinese video game, and "smell of work," a social media term that describes a state of fatigue, mental exhaustion, and loss of interest in life resulting from long working hours.

For global buzzwords, the list included "election," "war," "change," "Paris Olympics," "Global South," "Artificial Intelligence," and "Large Language Model."

The lists were compiled using an algorithm that analyzed a corpus of Chinese characters along with public recommendations, with final results confirmed by experts and researchers.

Having been held for 19 consecutive years, this annual event is jointly organized by the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center, the Commercial Press, and other institutions.