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Chinese media selected the 10 most popular phrases from the past three decades to mark the official 30th anniversary of China's reform and opening up, which falls on this month.
When China began to reform and open-up 30 years ago, people began experiencing, seeing and doing new things. In fact things were so new, they needed to create new words to describe what was happening.
In order of popularity, starting with number one:
"Go in for business"
In the 1980s when China was starting to transition from a planned economy to a market economy, it had a two-track pricing system (official and market prices) for industrial raw materials, including steel, non-ferrous metals, timber and coal.
Seeing business opportunities within the pricing system, many people, especially government employees and those from state-run factories or institutes, quit their jobs to open their own businesses.
"Going for business" was often used to refer to the phenomena of people breaking away from the constraints of a planned system to embrace the market economy.
"Be laid off and get re-employed"
To adapt to the market economy and improve competitiveness of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the 1990s, China began restructuring.
"Encouraging mergers, standardizing bankruptcy, laying off and reassigning redundant workers, streamlining for higher efficiency" was a guideline in the SOEs reforms.
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