'SARS' tops Chinese newspaper buzzwords of 2003

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, January 09, 2004

'SARS' tops Chinese newspaper buzzwords of 2003

The top ten popular words of mainstream Chinese newspapers in 2003 were unveiled Thursday, Jan 8, in Beijing. The list is topped by "SARS", followed by "Shenzhou V", "Iraqi War", "build a well-off society in an all-round way", " the Third Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC)", "the Three Gorges Project", "social security funds", "Olympic Park", "six-party talks" and "the new leadership of China".

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The top ten popular words of mainstream Chinese newspapers in 2003 were unveiled Thursday in Beijing. The list is topped by "SARS", followed by "Shenzhou V", "Iraqi War", "build a well-off society in an all-round way", " the Third Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC)", "the Three Gorges Project", "social security funds", "Olympic Park", "six-party talks" and "the new leadership of China".

The "top ten buzzwords", jointly unveiled by the Beijing Language and Culture University, China Association of Press Technicians and the Chinese Information Processing Society of China, are divided into four categories: comprehensive, economic, SARS special and international.

Based on circulation, said Zhang Pu, director of the Institute of Applied Linguistics of the said university, organizers selected 14 mainstream newspapers of China as text sources including People's Daily, Guangming Daily, China Youth Daily and Nanfang Weekend. As a major way of recording social developments, the releasing of popular words has become a wide practice in foreign countries, and more categories are expected in future.

These words are singled out from all the language materials from the above-mentioned newspapers dating from January 1 to December 25, 2003, including some 560,000 texts in 430 million Chinese characters, Zhang said.

The top ten buzzwords in the economic category are: "Three Gorges Project", "social security funds", "anti-dumping investigations", "rejuvenation of the old industrial base of northeast China", "south-north water diversion", "the Ministry of Commerce", "China Banking Regulatory Commission", "Olympic Marketing Development Project", "global economic recovery" and "pressure on Renminbi revaluation".

The international words are: "Iraqi War", "post-war reconstruction", "six-party talks", "ceasefire between India and Pakistan", "roadmap for Middle East peace", "biological and chemical weapons", "World AIDS Day", "the Human Genome Project", "terrorist incidents" and "Miss World".

Words special for SARS are: "SARS", "epidemic situation", "suspected", "quarantine", "coronavirus", "emergency scheme", "mask", "disinfect", "fever department" and "World Health Organization (WHO)".

By PD Online staff member Li Heng

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