UNESCO is unwittingly contributing to the controversy surrounding the term ‘Lunar New Year’

Lunar New Year decorations. Image: Oiwan Lam

January 29 marked the beginning of the Lunar New Year, a festival celebrated across Asia, including China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and more. The festival date is based on the lunisolar calendar and is usually referred to as Lunar New Year, Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival in English by most media outlets. 

However, in recent years, the naming of the festival has become contentious — more and more mainland Chinese insist the festival has a Chinese origin and should thus be called “Chinese New Year.” In contrast, others see “Lunar New Year” as more inclusive as it is celebrated across 200 countries and communities, not just in China. 

The cultural tension has escalated as 2025 marks the first new year since UNESCO approved China’s application to include customs of the Spring Festival to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2024. Some mainland Chinese online patriots interpret the gesture as an official and international acknowledgment of the Chinese ownership of the festival and advocate for its standard translation into “Chinese New Year.”

UNESCO has established three lists of intangible cultural heritage to raise awareness of their significance and encourage cultural preservation throughout the world. However, the official attribution of cultural practice as the heritage of a single nation has unintentionally created tensions and conflicts in Asia. This is largely because cultures are constantly evolving and have large historical footprints that transcend modern borders and conflicts.

For example, the first cultural battle between Chinese and Korean internet users was triggered by South Korea's successful application to add the Gangneung Danoje Festival to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2005. Although the Korean festival has unique shamanistic rituals, some Chinese online patriots accused Korea of stealing the Dragon Boat Festival because both festivals took place in early summer and shared the same written Han character, 端午節. Again, in 2013, after the collective practice of Kimjang (the making and sharing of kimchi) was included in UNESCO’s list, some Chinese internet users protested and claimed that Korean Kimchi originated from China’s Sichuan province. To avoid confusion, the South Korean government changed the Han character of Kimchi from 泡菜, meaning fermented vegetable in Chinese, into 辛奇, a phonetic transliteration of the word Kimchi, into Han characters.

This Lunar New Year controversy is of a similar nature but far more extensive because many other countries share the festival. 

Even though the wording of UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage is “Spring festival, social practices of the Chinese people in celebration of the traditional new year,” some Chinese online patriots take the opportunity to standardize the English translation of the festival as “Chinese New Year.”

They insist that the usage of the term “Lunar New Year” is part of a cultural war meant to undermine the impact of Chinese culture in Asia. On Xiaohongshu, a popular Chinese social media platform, some Chinese users launched a campaign to educate foreign users to use “Chinese New Year” in their greeting messages. Here is one such message that was circulated on Chinese social media (via Weibo user Xún Yè Yǔ):

对中国人请不要说 Lunar New Year,这是一些继承了中国传统文化,却迫切想“去中国化”,与中国文化切割,再进行占有的人搞的文化破坏和掠夺,因为中国农历新年并不以“lunar calendar”为计算单位,而使用的是“chinese calendar”,一种阴阳合历,所以在这个我们已经使用了千百年的中国历史节日说“lunar”是一种非常恶劣的文化侵占行为。

Please don't greet Chinese people with the term Lunar New Year. This is an act of de-sinicization committed by those who have inherited traditional Chinese culture but wanted to cut their Chinese cultural ties. They undermine the Chinese origin of their culture in order to take possession of it. The Chinese agricultural calendar is not just based on the lunar calendar but is a combination of lunar and solar calendars. Hence, calling this festival, which has thousands of years of history, ‘lunar new year’ is a vile act of cultural appropriation. 

China's neighboring countries, including Korea and Vietnam, also celebrate the Lunar New Year. In Korea, the festival is called Soellai, while in Vietnam, it is called Tết Nguyên Đán. Both translate the festival as Lunar New Year in English.

Some Chinese online patriots also turned to Taiwanese and Hongkongers — where the term Lunar New Year is more common — and said their translation preference showed separatist undertones. Hence,  some embarked on a boycott against Chinese companies that used “Lunar New Year” in their greeting posters. A Guangdong-based animation blogger, for example, called out five Chinese companies on Weibo:

今年春节申遗成功, 应该用Chinese New Year, 但这些中国企业还在lunar new year
点名: 霸王茶姬,CoCo卓雅,携程,泡泡玛特…… ​

Spring festival has been successfully included in UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage this year. We should thus use the term ‘Chinese New Year.’ However, some Chinese companies still use the term lunar new year. They are: Chagee, CoCo Bubble Tea, Trip.com, Pop Mart…

Eventually, Chagee, a popular tea shop, had to apologize for its choice of words in its New Year greeting. 

The state-owned Chinese Central Television also ran a news feature to echo the online campaign, and the official narrative was quickly picked up by many pro-China influencers, such as @zhao_dashuai on X, formerly Twitter:

However, many also mock the extreme nationalist performance as, previously, Chinese state media outlets, including Xinhua and People’s Daily, also carried “Lunar New Year” in their news headlines. 

In fact, on December 22, 2023, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution to add the “Lunar New Year” to its official holiday list while acknowledging that the holiday is observed in many member states. 

Moreover, even the word “lunar” is not completely accurate in capturing the lunisolar nature of the festival. The term “Chinese New Year” also sounds quite awkward as Chinese people never call the festival “中國新年” (China’s new year) or “華人新年”(Chinese people’s new year) in their own tongues.  The most conventional words among Chinese are 春節 (Spring Festival or Chun Jie), 農歷新年 (Agricultural Calendar New Year or Lunar New Year), or simply 過新年 (Crossing the New Year).

Some fear the standardization of the English naming of the festival into “Chinese New Year” not only excludes the non-Chinese but also destroys the diversity of Chinese cultures. 

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