It definitely isn't numbers, i can tell that even with my beginner Chinese. I recognize maybe about half of the characters, the rest i have to look up (and also i can't really make out some of them very well).

Okay, so in clockwise order starting from the top, i believe it says:

富强 (fùqiáng) Prosperity [this one was the hardest to make out because it's partially obscured, the first character could also be 冨 or 畗, but according to the dictionary that doesn't seem to make any sense]

民主 (mínzhǔ) Democracy

文明 (wénmíng) Civilization

和谐 (héxié) Harmony

自由 (zìyóu) Freedom

平等 (píngděng) Equality

公正 (gōngzhèng) Justice

法治 (fǎzhì) Rule of Law

爱国 (àiguó) Patriotism [this one is really easy, it's literally just 爱 "love" + 国 "country"]

敬业 (jìngyè) Dedication

诚信 (chéngxìn) Integrity

友善 (yǒushàn) Friendliness [the second character here was pretty hard to read, hope i got it right; luckily the first character is an easy one so i know the whole thing definitely has something to do with friend]

I'd say it looks like they're trying to show the core principles of the CPC.

[–] GreatSympathy505@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Okay, imma write this down, I’m looking into Mandarin more and more (haven’t studied anything really), and it just keeps getting more interesting (also I fucking LOVE the clock design, I need it!)

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Chinese is... interesting. Definitely the most unusual language i've tried to learn. Super easy grammar, and the pronunciation is not as difficult as it seems once you get used to the tones, but so many homonyms you will lose your mind!

And the way they put compound words together from individual characters is really fun. Though sometimes it gets a bit odd with foreign "loan" words...

Take the above word for "rule of law": 法治 (fǎzhì) for example.

The most common meanings for the characters that make it up are: "law" for 法 and "rule" for 治. Pretty straightforward right?

But wait! 法 is actually also used to indicate something French. 法国 (fàguó) is France, and 法语 (fǎyǔ) is the French language. So if you were used to 法 meaning French you might think that 法治 means "French rule".

But it gets even better! Guess what happens if you switch the characters in 法语 around? That's right, you get 语法 (yǔfǎ) which means "grammar" (literally "language law"). French language is the inverse of grammar. Is that a low-key diss? Idk but I like it.

There are tons of examples like this with characters that have multiple meanings.

For someone like myself who is passionate about languages this sort of stuff is just super cool to learn. Not easy. But fun.