China's 2025 buzzwords highlight AI, lifestyle, and social trends

China's 2025 annual buzzwords. (Photo courtesy of Yaowen-Jiaozi editorial team)

(ECNS) -- China’s language magazine Yaowen-Jiaozi has released its annual list of the top 10 buzzwords of 2025. The top three are “resilience,” “embodied intelligence” and “suchao,” a grassroots football league in Jiangsu Province that has grown into a nationwide phenomenon.

Other entries include “cyber reconciliation,” describing Chinese and American netizens cross-checking personal experiences online; “digital nomads,” referring to location-independent professionals; and “guzi,” a phonetic borrowing of “goods” that reflects the booming market for anime and gaming merchandise.

The list also features “prefabricated XX”; “huoren gan,” meaning a “real-person vibe”; and “basic A, non-basic B,” a humorous phrase contrasting the simple with the unexpectedly extravagant. It concludes with a playful couplet contrasting a state of being “calm, composed and masterful” with one of “rushing about, tumbling and scrambling,” first used by Taiwanese lawmaker Wang Shih-chien during a council inquiry on government inefficiency.

Huang Anjing, editor-in-chief of Yaowen-Jiaozi, said that selection of the words followed the publication’s long-standing “dual criteria” approach, weighing both sociological relevance and linguistic value. Analyzing this year's edition, Huang noted that artificial intelligence is leaving a growing imprint on the Chinese language, while economic and lifestyle shifts—such as industrial upgrading and more diverse employment patterns—have inspired new terms like “guzi” and “digital nomad.”

Language, Huang said, is a "window into public sentiment". Expressions such as "basic A, non-basic B" capture the everyday emotional values of ordinary people, offering a "snapshot of life" as lived across Chinese society today.

(By Zhang Jiahao)