Annual top-10 keywords in People’s Daily, 2000–2024
CHINA
Which topics remained at the center of coverage, and which surged in a particular year? This project examines 780,969 deduplicated People’s Daily articles published between 2000 and 2024.
Each line follows one keyword across the years in which it ranked in the annual top 10. Search in English or Chinese, click a trajectory to follow how a keyword’s rank changed across its displayed years, use the smaller overview to change the visible range, or switch between the topics discussed most and those that stood out relative to other years.
A missing year means that the keyword did not appear in that year’s top 10 under the selected ranking method; it does not mean that the keyword received no coverage.
Thickest = reached #1 · Thinnest = best rank between #8 and #10.
Current ranking
MOST DISTINCTIVE
Most Distinctive identifies keywords whose annual article coverage was unusually high relative to their smoothed cross-year baseline. A support-weight adjustment reduces volatility from low article counts.
Selected keyword · Annual top-10 entries only
This English rendering is flagged for editorial review and should not be treated as definitive official terminology.
View selected top-10 entries
| Year | Rank | Articles | Coverage | Raw relative lift |
|---|
Loading keyword trajectories…
2000–2024
Drag either edge to resize; drag inside a shortened window to move it.Annual rank is shown vertically and year horizontally. Each line represents one keyword and connects only consecutive years in which it appeared in the selected method’s annual top 10. Line thickness records the keyword’s best displayed rank. A line meets the bottom edge before entering or leaving the top 10; these short boundary tails are visual guides, not rank-11 observations. A missing year means “not in the top 10,” not zero article coverage. The visualization does not estimate ranks or coverage for missing years.
Some interesting insights
In 2003, ranked #1 in the Most Distinctive list.
In 2008, ranked #1. The remained in the Most Distinctive top 10 during 2008–2011.
In 2020, and ranked #1 and #2 in the Most Distinctive list.
In 2024, ranked #1 and ranked #4.
The Most Discussed list reveals a different pattern: appeared in the annual top 10 in all 25 years, while appeared in 24.
Methodology
What the data supports
The corpus covers 2000–2024 and contains 780,969 deduplicated People’s Daily articles. Rankings use a curated, non-person topic lexicon; personal names are excluded.
Most Discussed ranks keywords by annual article coverage: the percentage of that year’s articles in which a keyword appeared at least once. It does not measure comments, public discussion, or social-media attention.
Most Distinctive identifies keywords whose annual article coverage was unusually high relative to their smoothed cross-year baseline. The ranking also applies a support-weight adjustment to reduce volatility from low article counts. Relative lift equals a keyword’s annual coverage divided by its smoothed cross-year baseline. The final ranking combines smoothed lift with the support weight, so raw relative lift alone does not determine rank.
What the chart does not show
The dataset retains only the top 10 keywords for each year and ranking method. A missing year therefore means “not in the top 10,” not zero article coverage. Lines are drawn only between consecutive top-10 entries. The visualization does not estimate ranks or coverage for missing years or claim to show a complete keyword-frequency history.
Color indicates the first year in which a keyword entered either top-10 ranking. It does not represent a topic category.