The Evolution of “X huà” in the Press Since the Late Qing Dynasty

This paper examines the evolution of the “X huà” of the newspaper ShenBao and People’s Daily through an econometric approach, and describes the manifestation of the “X huà” over time since the late Qing Dynasty. The paper finds that the proportion of “X huà” basically did not increase at the stage of ShenBao, but steadily increased at the stage of People’s Daily. The number of “X huà” words as a whole showed a tendency to rise and then fall, with no growth before the 1920s, fluctuating and rising after the 1920s, and stabilizing after a sudden drop in the 21st century. In the “X huà”, not only nouns and adjectives, but also verbs, distinguishing words, and adverbs can enter the “X” component. It is possible that new multi-syllabic words will enter the “X” slot, but it is expected that few new “X huà” words will appear in the future, and the number of word types will tend to stabilize. The proportion of “X huà” words will continue to increase over the years.