Meeting Minutes in Chinese: Terms, Format and Phrases

Meeting minutes in Chinese are most often written 会议纪要 (huìyì jìyào) or 会议记录 (huìyì jìlù). They are not quite the same thing. 会议记录 is the running record of what was said. 会议纪要 is the shorter, more formal summary of what was agreed. This guide shows you which one to use, how a Chinese set of minutes is laid out, and the phrases that make the writing sound natural at work.

TL;DR

• Use 会议纪要 for a polished summary of decisions and 会议记录 for a fuller note of what was said.
• A set of 会议纪要 has three parts: 标题 (title), 正文 (body) and 落款 (signature block).
• Open body paragraphs with fixed phrases such as 会议认为, 会议指出 and 会议强调.
• Record the date, place, attendees, decisions and who does what by when, just as you would in English.
• Read the finished minutes aloud once, then ask a Mandarin-speaking colleague or teacher to check tone and wording.

Table of Contents

• 会议纪要 or 会议记录: which word do you need?
• What meeting minutes record in any language
• How a Chinese 会议纪要 is laid out
• Phrases that make minutes sound natural
• A short sample set of minutes
• Types of 会议纪要
• Writing minutes when Mandarin is your second language
• How to check your Chinese minutes before you send them
• Our perspective
• Learn to write and speak business Mandarin with us
• FAQ
• Sources

会议纪要 or 会议记录: which word do you need?

If you are translating “meeting minutes” and want one answer, use 会议纪要 for a summary of outcomes and 会议记录 for a record of the discussion. Both are correct translations, but they signal different documents.

The Cambridge Dictionary gives 议事录 or 会议记录 for “the minutes”, defined as the written record of what was said at a meeting. The Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in its guide to official writing, goes further. It describes 会议纪要 as a statutory official document (法定公务文书) that communicates the meeting situation and agreed matters, and separates it from 会议记录, which it treats as an administrative work record.

That difference is useful in practice:

The dictionary entry for 纪要 describes it as minutes or a written summary of a meeting, with the traditional form 紀要. Mainland China and Singapore use simplified characters, so 纪要 is the form you will normally write.

A quick rule for Singapore workplaces: if your team keeps notes in English and needs a Chinese version for a partner in China, send a 会议纪要. If a colleague asks for “the notes”, 会议记录 is the natural word.

What meeting minutes record in any language

Before the Chinese wording, get the content right. Good minutes work the same way in every language. The University of Hull Library guide explains that minutes are governance documents that record the business discussed and the decisions taken, usually written by a secretary for the board, council or committee that held the meeting.

The same guide lists what they typically contain: date and place, attendees and absences, acceptance of the previous minutes, business discussed, decisions made, actions taken, and the proposed date of the next meeting. LegalZoom adds that formal minutes capture key discussions, motions, votes and resolutions.

Most business teams do not need every item. A practical working set for a regular project meeting is:

1. Meeting name, date, time and place (or online platform)
2. Attendees and apologies
3. Items discussed, in agenda order
4. Decisions made
5. Action items: who, what, by when
6. Date of the next meeting

The Chinese version of these six elements is shown in the next section.

How a Chinese 会议纪要 is laid out

A 会议纪要 has three parts. The Chinese encyclopedia entry for 纪要 describes it as made up of 标题 (title), 正文 (body) and 落款 (signature block), and the body generally splits into 会议概况 (meeting overview) and 会议的精神和议定事项 (the spirit of the meeting and the matters agreed).

The title (标题)

The Guangxi Academy guide gives two title formats. One is the meeting name plus 纪要, for example 全国财贸工会工作会议纪要. The other states the main content in the title, for example 关于加强纪检工作座谈会纪要 (source).

For a company meeting, the first format is almost always enough:

• 市场部月度例会纪要 (Marketing department monthly meeting minutes)
• 新加坡分公司项目进度会议纪要 (Singapore branch project progress meeting minutes)
• 供应商洽谈会纪要 (Supplier negotiation meeting minutes)

The opening (会议概况)

The same guide says the opening should briefly introduce the meeting: its background and purpose, its name, time, place, attendees and chair, the main agenda items, and a short evaluation of the meeting (source). In a business setting you can compress this into two or three lines:

2026年11月5日上午10点，公司在新加坡办公室召开了项目进度会议。会议由项目经理王先生主持，市场部、销售部和财务部代表出席。

This is an illustration written for this guide, not a quotation. It reads: “On 5 November 2026 at 10 a.m., the company held a project progress meeting at its Singapore office. The meeting was chaired by project manager Mr. Wang, with representatives from marketing, sales and finance attending.”

The body (议定事项)

This is the part readers actually want. List each decision as its own numbered point. Keep sentences short and put the decision first, then the owner and deadline.

The signature block (落款)

At the end, add the department or the person who prepared the minutes and the date. In a small team this can be as simple as the note-taker’s name and department on the right-hand side, with the date below.

Phrases that make minutes sound natural

Chinese minutes lean on a small set of stock openers. The Guangxi Academy guide lists common ones for paragraph openings: 会议认为 (the meeting believes), 会议指出 (the meeting points out), 会议强调 (the meeting emphasizes) and 与会人员一致表示 (attendees unanimously expressed).

Here they are in use, together with other phrases that fit the same register. The sentences below are our own teaching examples.

Two habits help. First, use 于 and 定于 for times and deadlines in writing, where speech would use 在. Second, prefer verbs like 讨论 (discuss), 决定 (decide), 同意 (agree), 负责 (be responsible for) and 跟进 (follow up), because they keep each line to one clear action.

If you want to rehearse the spoken side of meetings too, our guide to Mandarin phrases for meetings and collaboration covers the language you will use before the minutes are written.

A short sample set of minutes

Here is a compact example you can adapt. It is invented for illustration.

市场部月度例会纪要

时间： 2026年11月5日 上午10:00
地点： 会议室A（或线上）
主持： 王经理
出席： 市场部全体成员

一、会议概况
本次会议回顾了第三季度的推广成果，并讨论了第四季度的预算安排。

二、议定事项

1. 会议认为，线上活动的转化率有所提高，应继续投入。
2. 会议决定，第四季度的预算由财务部与市场部共同复核。
3. 请陈小姐于11月12日前提交活动方案。

三、下次会议
下次会议定于12月3日上午10点举行。

记录人：李明
2026年11月5日

Notice what the example does. It keeps the title in the “meeting name plus 纪要” pattern, lists decisions as numbered items, and gives each action an owner and a date. The English-language list of minutes content from Hull (date, place, attendees, business, decisions, next meeting) maps onto it almost line by line.

Types of 会议纪要

Chinese official writing sorts minutes by meeting type. The Guangxi Academy guide names eight categories: 工作会议纪要 (work meeting), 代表会议纪要 (representative meeting), 座谈会纪要 (symposium), 联席会议纪要 (joint meeting), 办公会议纪要 (office meeting), 汇报会议纪要 (report meeting), 技术鉴定会纪要 (technical appraisal meeting) and 科研学术会议纪要 (scientific research academic meeting) (source).

For everyday business, three matter most:

• 工作会议纪要: regular team and project meetings.
• 联席会议纪要: meetings between departments or between companies, common in cross-border projects.
• 办公会议纪要: management or office meetings that set internal decisions.

If your Singapore team works with a partner in China, the 联席 format is often the closest fit, since both sides sign off on the same summary.

Writing minutes when Mandarin is your second language

Most learners find that the vocabulary is not the hard part. The hard part is register: formal written Chinese is more compact than spoken Mandarin, and it prefers set patterns. These habits help.

1. Take notes in the language you think in, then convert. Capture names, numbers and decisions first. Turn them into Chinese sentences straight after the meeting while you remember the context.
2. Build a personal phrase bank. Keep the openers from the table above, plus verbs for deciding, assigning and postponing. Reuse them until they feel automatic.
3. Write decisions, not conversation. A 会议纪要 is not a transcript. If two people debated for ten minutes, record the outcome and, if needed, one line on the reason.
4. Be exact with numbers, dates and names. Use Arabic numerals for amounts and dates, and write names the way the person writes them in their own email signature.
5. Mind the tone. Minutes are impersonal. Say 会议决定 rather than “我们觉得”, and avoid slang or chat abbreviations.

The vocabulary behind these lines overlaps with what you meet in contracts, emails and presentations. Our business Chinese vocabulary list is a good place to build it.

How to check your Chinese minutes before you send them

Use this checklist for a final read:

• Title: does it name the meeting and end in 纪要?
• Basics: are the date, time, place, chair and attendees all there?
• Decisions: is each one a full sentence with a clear verb?
• Actions: does each have a person and a deadline?
• Consistency: are names, department titles and figures written the same way throughout?
• Register: are there any spoken-style phrases that should be written-style?
• Characters: are they simplified throughout, and is the pinyin correct if you add it for colleagues who are still learning?

Then read it aloud. If you stumble over a sentence, it is probably too long. Finally, ask a native Mandarin speaker, such as a colleague or your teacher, to look at the first few minutes you write. After a few rounds, most people find their own recurring errors and the corrections get shorter.

Minutes also feed into relationships. In many Chinese-speaking business settings, a clear, courteous summary shows that you listened and that you respect the other side’s time. Our guides to Chinese business meeting etiquette and Chinese business culture and etiquette explain the wider context, from how meetings open to how follow-ups are received.

Our perspective

We have taught business Mandarin in Singapore since 2003, and minutes are a topic our adult learners raise again and again. They usually arrive with a single question about a word, then discover that the real task is writing clearly in a formal register.

Our advice is to treat minutes as a small, repeatable skill rather than a vocabulary test. Learn the three-part layout, collect ten or fifteen stock phrases, and practise on a real meeting from your own week. That is far more useful than memorising long lists of terms you will never write.

We also find that writing and speaking reinforce each other. A learner who can say 会议认为 or 请在周五前提交 in a meeting will write them faster in the minutes. That is why our business Mandarin lessons combine speaking, listening, reading and writing around situations you actually face: meetings, emails, negotiations and follow-ups.

If your work involves Chinese-speaking clients or colleagues, a structured course with a native-speaking instructor who is fluent in English gets you to confident, professional writing sooner than studying alone, because every sentence you write gets corrected against real workplace usage.

Paul

Learn to write and speak business Mandarin with us

If you want to move from looking up words to using them at work, our business Mandarin courses are built for that. You can learn in person at our centre at 10 Anson Road, Level 22, International Plaza, Singapore 079903, right above Tanjong Pagar MRT, or online by Zoom.

Here is how the options compare, with prices as published on our site:

If you need to write more formally, our Business Chinese Writing Course is the closest fit for minutes, reports and emails. For teams, we also run corporate Mandarin training tailored to your staff and their work situations. Not sure where to start? Our business Chinese for businessmen guide explains what to focus on first.

FAQ

What is the difference between 会议纪要 and 会议记录?

会议记录 is the record of what happened and was said, kept as a work record. 会议纪要 is a formal summary of the main points and agreed matters, prepared to be shared or filed. The Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences treats the second as an official document and the first as an administrative record. In most company settings, send 会议纪要 to others and keep 会议记录 for your own file.

How do you say “minutes of the meeting” in Chinese?

The most common choices are 会议纪要 (huìyì jìyào) and 会议记录 (huìyì jìlù). The Cambridge Dictionary lists 议事录 and 会议记录 for “the minutes”. All three are understood, but 会议纪要 is the usual wording for a formal summary circulated after the meeting.

What should a Chinese set of meeting minutes include?

Start with a title, then a short overview with the date, place, attendees, chair and main agenda, then the decisions and actions, and finish with the signature block. Add the date of the next meeting if one is set. This follows the three-part layout of title, body and signature block.

Which phrases open a paragraph in Chinese minutes?

The stock openers are 会议认为 (the meeting believes), 会议指出 (the meeting points out), 会议强调 (the meeting emphasizes) and 与会人员一致表示 (attendees unanimously expressed). Use them to introduce views and agreed points, then follow with a clear decision and, where needed, an owner and a deadline.

Can I learn to write Chinese minutes in a business Mandarin class?

Yes. Business Mandarin lessons cover the vocabulary, sentence patterns and formal register that minutes need, and writing practice with an instructor gives you corrections on real documents. Our Business Chinese Writing Course and business Mandarin classes in Singapore, in person or on Zoom, are designed around that kind of workplace communication.

Sources

• 常用公文写作——会议纪要, Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences
• Minutes, Understanding Common Record Types, University of Hull Library
• THE MINUTES in Simplified Chinese, Cambridge Dictionary
• What are meeting minutes?, LegalZoom
• Meeting minutes, MDBG Chinese Dictionary
• 紀要, 中文百科全書

Recommended

• Chinese Business Meeting Etiquette: A Professional’s Guide
• Must-Know Mandarin Phrases for Workplaces