闪孕 (shan3 yun4)
quick pregnancy
It refers to some white-collar women who get pregnant in a hurry to avoid being fired. China’s labor law prevents a company from firing a pregnant employee unless the company is insolvent.

躲猫猫 (duo3 mao1 mao1)
hide-and-seek
The Chinese term for “hide-and-seek” has become a buzzword overnight among Chinese Netizens after a 24-year-old man died in police custody in south China’s Yunnan Province and an official report said he ran into a wall blindfolded while playing hide-and-seek with inmates. Unconvinced, a large number of Netizens are taking part in an investigation into the young man’s death. The  investigation showed he was beaten to death by inmates while playing the game.

小月 (xiao3 yue4)
female spendthrift
A pun on the Chinese word for “moonlight,” the term refers to those who spend all their income before next payday. Since the term uses part of the Chinese word and sounds like a female name, it is used to describe women in this category.

小光 (xiao3 guang1)
male spendthrift
Like above, this term uses another part of the Chinese word for “moonlight” and is used to describe male spendthrifts.

赖校族 (lai4 xiao4 zu2)
campus dwellers
It refers to those who have already graduated from college but choose to stay on campus, scared by the bleak job market and wanting to live on campus at a low cost.

卧槽族 (wo4 cao2 zu2)
job-hugging clan
A twist on the Chinese word for "job hopping," this term means "job-hugging" as many people now cling to their current jobs because companies no longer hire new staff due to global economic crisis.

肌肉车 (ji1 rou4 che1)
gas guzzler
This term refers to high gasoline-consuming and big-sized automobiles, usually driven by high-power engines. The automobiles are generally designed with hard lines, hence the name in Chinese which means "muscular car."

经济适用男 (jing1 ji4 shi4 yong4 nan2)
budget husband
More and more women now tend to seek a "budget husband" instead of wealthy men just as home buyers now look for budget houses rather than villas during the economic crisis. Although not earning a lot, the budget husbands don抰 have bad habits such as drinking, smoking or gambling and are family-oriented.

语音钓鱼 (yv3 yin1 dia4o yu2)
vishing
This is a portmanteau by blending "voice" and "phishing" and means an attempt to fool a person into submitting personal, financial or password data either by sending an email that includes a scammer-controlled phone number, or by spoofing an automated phone call from a financial institution using VoIP.

抓手 (zhua1 shou3)
handle, key issue
Originally meaning a handgrip or knob, the term is now frequently used to describe an opportunity or means for achieving a goal. It may also mean key issues or points for a breakthrough.

哈中族 (ha1 zhong1 zu2)
chinophile
More and more people in the world are showing an interest in Chinese elements, as seen in frequent scenes featuring items of Chinese culture like chopsticks, kung fu and qipao in foreign movies.

中美国 (zhong1 mei3 guo2)
chimerica
Economist Niall Ferguson coined the word to emphasize the close and interdependent relations between the world's two major economies, China and America.

沪漂 (hu4 piao1)
Shanghai drifter
The Chinese term literally means "floating in Shanghai." It refers to anyone who hopes to make it in Shanghai but has yet to find a stable and satisfactory job.

套大空 (tao4 da4 kong1)
cliche plus big empty words
The term refers to politically correct but nonsensical speeches and remarks. They are usually trite and hackneyed.

月光门牌 (yue4 guang1 men2 pai2)
moonlight doorplate
Shanghai has recently installed some new doorplates for local houses. These new plates absorb light during the day and become illuminated at night for about 12 hours.

情义男 (qing2 yi4 nan2)
man of love and loyalty
This Chinese term was first used about the man who carried the body of his wife piggyback on a moped home after his wife died in the Sichuan Province earthquake last May. After his action was revealed by the media, he was called "a man of love and loyalty."

绿色新政(lv4 se4 xin1 zheng4)
Green New Deal
Top economists and world leaders are working on a "Green New Deal" to create millions of jobs, slash poverty and avert environmental disaster in an attempt to battle the global downturn and revive the world economy.

Read More...

败家女 (bai4 jia1 nǚ)
shopaholic woman
A woman who is so addicted to shopping that she is living on the brink of bankruptcy. The phrase is coined from a Chinese term which means a prodigal son or daughter.

错峰游 (cuo4 feng1 you2)
off-season tour
To avoid the high cost during the peak travel season, more and more people now opt to go on a trip in the off-season in order to save costs and avoid crowds.

地接社 (di4 jie1 she4)
local tour operators
Tour operators at certain tourist destinations who earn commissions for receiving a tour group from another city or country.

桥段 (qiao2 duan4)
stereotyped plot
This term literally means “bridge suspension” and is borrowed to refer to stereotyped plots in a film, such as a hero coming to the rescue of victims at a crucial moment and defusing a bomb in the nick of time.

巧实力 (qiao3 shi2 li4)
smart power
The term in international relations means the ability to combine hard and soft power in a winning strategy. The term gained notice when then US Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton used it frequently during a speech in January. Clinton pledged to use America’s “smart power” to renew the nation’s international leadership and deal with trouble spots.

小透明 (xiao3 tou4 ming2)
neglected author/blogger
The word literally means “small and transparent” in Chinese. If something’s small and transparent, people tend to neglect its existence. Some Chinese bloggers who receive little feedback laugh at themselves as “small and transparent.”

精分 (jing1 fen1)
duplicitous self-promoter
It is a Chinese abbreviation for the word schizophrenia. But it is now often used to describe people, particularly some pop stars, who use false IDs to leave flattering comments in their own blog postings.

亨利一族 (heng1 li4 yi1 zu2)
HENRY
This term stands for “High Earner, Not Rich Yet” and refers to people with substantial income, but little wealth. For instance, people in the United States who earn about US$250,000 a year, but due to high taxes and other debts, the value of their accumulated assets hasn’t reach US$3 million yet.

时差党 (shi2 cha1 dang3)
time-difference party
"Time-difference party,"as the Chinese term means literally, refers to people who live in a different time zone compared with their friends in China. They share their online game registration with a person in another time zone, so they can play the same game in shifts.

O一代 (O yi2 dai4)
generation O
This term refers to people in the United States who are approximately 18 to 35 years old and voted for, or supported, Barack Obama in the 2008 US presidential election.

呛声 (qiang4 sheng1)
vociferous challenge, protest
The term is derived from the dialect of southern China's Fujian Province. It means making public challenges or demonstrating one's anger against certain decisions, proposals or public figures by speaking out loudly.

垄奴 (long3 nu2)
monopoly slave
The term refers to consumers of services or products from monopoly companies who have to accept the service providers' clauses no matter how unfair they may be.

砖家 (zhuan1 jia1)
charlatan
The term, popular on the Internet and with a negative connotation, generally refers to those people who like to brag about their limited knowledge and promote themselves as "experts." The pronunciation of the phrase in Chinese is exactly the same as "expert" and the first character means "brick" in Chinese, which implies these "experts" are so shameless that their faces are tough enough to withstand the force of a brick.

剩斗士 (sheng4 dou4 shi4)
leftover love seeker
The term shares the same pronunciation as that for popular Japanese cartoon character "Saint Saiya" in Chinese and refers to men and women who, for whatever reason, have not found their right marriage partners at an age traditionally believed way past their prime. But they still keep looking.

裁员滚滚 (cai2 yuan2 gun3 gun3)
continuous layoff
This concocted phrase sounds similar to a popular term meaning "having fortune flooding to you" in Chinese. However, the first two characters have changed from "fortune" in the popular saying to "laying off." So, in the face of economic downturn, Chinese jokingly used this new phrase to replace the popular one as a greeting during the recent Chinese New Year holidays.

云娱乐 (yun2 yu2 le4)
cloud entertainment
Based on the idea of "cloud computing," an Internet-based use of computer technology, the term refers to home entertainment such as Web-infused television environments in which customized services and programs are prepared on Web servers and delivered to consumer electronic devices, saving users a lot of money on in-home entertainment systems. Cloud here means the Internet.

僵尸企业 (jiang1 shi1 qi3 ye4)
zombie companies
The term, first used by Business Week magazine in a recent issue, refers to companies that receive government bailout funding and continue to operate even though they are nearly defunct. The debtors lean on support from lenders or the government to stay in business. Zombie companies can drag healthier rivals into insolvency.