Hottest Chinese words, characters of 2017 released

A list of 20 hottest Chinese words and characters that reflected people's lives and issues in the past year has been announced, state media reported today.
Words and characters on the 2017 list related to domestic topics include "share", "cloud", "new era" and "kindergarten", while those related to international issues include "nuclear", "intelligence", "AlphaGo" and "gravitational wave".
The campaign, whose organisers include the National Language Resource Monitoring and Research Center and the Commercial Press, received thousands of words and characters between November 20 and December 4 by netizens nationwide.
The campaign's website got more than 200 million clicks from netizens, whose picks were discussed by a panel of experts before the shortlist was released yesterday.

The final list of two words and two characters will be announced on December 21.
The shortlist reflects people's lives and the hot issues that have come up in the past year, both in China and abroad, state-run Xinhua news agency said.
This year's campaign is the 12th of its kind. It aims to encourage people to record their lives and depict changes in society and the world in words.