The Top 10 Chinese Searches on Baidu in 2012 — Hint: There’s a Lot About Corruption

Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) loves lists as much as the next human, so the leading Chinese search engine has compiled the top ten searches for hot news topics of the year.

The ten on the list [1] show that China’s web users were mostly concerned with old certainties (death and taxes), prosperity (like the price of silver), and official corruption. In fact, three of the ten topical terms on Baidu in 2012 are related to corruption. Indeed, there’s certainly enough grift and graft out there to fill hundreds of lists thousands of times over.

So, here’s the top ten for 2012:

1. The Wang Lijun controversy:
When one of Chongqing’s top cops, hand-picked by the Party Secretary of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, sought refuge in the US Consulate in the neighboring provincial capital of Chengdu, it was the start of the dramatic fall – bigger, perhaps, than Watergate – of Bo. The police chief was Wang Lijun, who is himself facing 15 years in jail for abuse of power and bribe-taking. It’s debatable if his defection is also being punished in that charge. As for Bo himself, see number three on this list.

2. The price of silver:
In tough economic times, the weighty stalwarts that are gold and silver make fine investments. But the price of silver was volatile throughout 2012, making it a trending search term throughout the year.

3. Bo Xilai is removed from posts:
In a tale that sounds more like some artsy modern-day restaging of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Bo Xilai’s wife was ultimately convicted of the murder of British businessman and totally-not-a-secret-agent Neil Heywood, who, though a friend of the family – had threatened to expose outflows of corrupt money the Bo family were channeling out of China. Basically, blackmail. Shortly after his wife’s imprisonment for dispatching Heywood, Bo was out of his job – and the Party. It was a rare spectacle of political muck-raking in a culture that likes to avoid messiness and dissent. Check out the full timeline of the scandal on the BBC.

Time to put up the prices!

4. Gas prices:
As with motorists around the world, gas prices have been worrying China’s drivers all year. And see number seven on the list for another thing they have to fret about.

5. “Paper gold”:
These gold certificates are essentially savings accounts for gold. Coupled with silver, it’s a way for Chinese households to invest at a time of tightening house-buying rules and suspect stocks and shares.

6. Individual income tax:
In some good news for a change, the income tax exemption was raised this year from 2,000 RMB to 3,500 RMB (US$320 to $560) per month, saving a lot of low-paid workers from a tax bill.