Over the past few weeks, the term gongtongfuyu or "common prosperity" has become the latest Chinese buzzword after President Xi Jinping invoked it at a top-level economic strategy meeting of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Aug 17.

Common prosperity is not a new term in the CPC lexicon; it first appeared nearly 70 years ago during the Mao Zedong era. One of the earliest mentions was in an article in the party mouthpiece People's Daily in 1953, titled The Path Of Socialism Is The Path To Common Prosperity, which stated that common prosperity could occur only through collective ownership of the resources of production.