Newspaper readers picked "anti-corruption" as the government catch phrase that will receive the most attention in China in 2005, according to a recent survey by the China Youth Daily, one of China's most influential newspapers.

The paper's attempt to predict the ten most popular catch-phrases in 2005 received 10,977 responses from Feb. 23 to 28. Survey participants were asked to choose 10 expressions from a list of 23 involving politics, economy, culture, education and entertainment.

Chinese people have repeatedly expressed their concerns about rampant government corruption, which has been called "the largest threat to the ruling authority" of the Communist Party of China.

"Anti-corruption" was selected by 49.4 percent of voters as the most likely popular expression in 2005. "Governance capability," acatch-phrase used by the CPC, followed with 44 percent of the votes. "Income gap," "harmonious society" and "problems with agriculture, rural regions and farmers" ranked next.

For the past four years, Beijing Language University, supportedby the State Language Resource Monitor Center and the Chinese Information Processing Society of China, has chosen the ten most popular expressions in term of frequency of usage among words in 14 mainstream Chinese newspapers.

"Governance capability" was the most popular expression in mainstream Chinese newspapers in 2004, followed by "Athens Olympics," "audit storm," "scientific concept of development," "allowance for land-losing farmers" and "anti-secession Law"

Source: Xinhua