Hu's slip into slang has nation floundering for its meaning

People say it all the time, but it's not the type of phrase you'd expect to hear in a speech by a major world leader. Yet, there it was. President Hu Jintao, speaking on December 18 about China's future political path in a speech commemorating the 30th anniversary of the reform and opening-up policy, used the slang phrase bu zheteng.

Maybe he did it to show he's just a regular Joe - or Zhou, or Hu. But whatever his reason, the phrase caught fire across the mainland as both a political term and a way to summarise opinions in all kinds of social situations.

At first, it baffled translators worldwide and triggered a kind of competition for an accurate interpretation because of its complex implications in a political and historical context.

After proposing two major goals for the future, Mr Hu said: 'As long as we don't waver, don't slack off and don't zheteng, and as long as we firmly push forward reform and opening up ... we will surely make this grand blueprint a reality and achieve the goals we are striving for.'

Bu means 'no' or 'not' in Chinese, and zheteng is a verb with several meanings - to flip-flop, to perform futile actions, to fix unbroken things, to repeatedly turn over, to create trouble or to flounder.

Never before had such an informal Chinese phrase appeared in a speech by a state leader, and Mr Hu didn't delve into the spirit of bu zheteng, which threw the whole nation into a guessing game over his real meaning.