when china speaks

edited by gilles guiheux and lu shi

Les belles lettres, 350 pages, 2025)

√ A linguistic atlas of contemporary China

What does language say about the state of a country? Which realities do expressions such as rabbit rice (mitu 米兔), new farmers (xinnongren 新农人), four courses and a soup (sicai yitang 四菜一汤), the reds of the Internet (wanghong 网红), or little fresh meat (xiaoxianrou 小鲜肉) designate, and what can they tell us about China today?

In this unprecedented and illuminating compilation, sixteen contributors from a wide range of backgrounds—sociologists, anthropologists, historians, geographers, political scientists, and linguists—all specializing in China’s language and culture, have chosen thirty-four neologisms related to the organization of the economy, work and daily life, educational choices, cultural practices, social identities, public health, and political control, both in the cities and in the countryside. Among this corpus of expressions that have appeared over the past two decades, some were coined by the Party-State and spread vertically from top to bottom, in the manner of the Nazi propaganda words studied by Victor Klemperer. Others were forged by ordinary citizens, appearing on Internet communities before circulating widely among more than a billion speakers. Combined, they draw an edifying portrait of a society in the throes of change, riddled with contradictions and tensions, and intensely connected to the rest of the world.

When China Speaks provides insight into the contemporary evolution of languages, the soft power of states through digital means, and the question of freedom of expression in the age of social networks. In spite of increased surveillance and the growing weight of ideological imperatives on the Chinese people, their language remains a place of creativity and resistance—a complexity we need to grasp if we are to understand the path taken by this singular country.

Gilles Guiheux is a professor of sociology of China at Université Paris Cité. His work has focused on entrepreneurs, and he is currently completing a study of working-class labor. He recently published La République populaire de Chine (Belles Lettres; English translation, Contemporary China: 1949 to the Present, translated by Andrew Brown, Polity, 2023).

Lu Shi is Honorary Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Lille. Her work has focused on migration and rural family enterprises. She has published Les voix de migrants (Presses universitaires du Midi, 2014).