‘China plate’ is Cockney rhyming slang for ‘mate’, and it is used exactly as you would use ‘mate’ itself, to address or refer to a friend. In practice the phrase is almost always shortened to ‘china’, as in ‘my old china’, with the ‘plate’ dropped once the rhyme has done its work. Although it began in London, the same rhyming-slang sense is recorded in Australian English too, and it survives in everyday speech far beyond its East End roots.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘china plate’?
‘China plate’ belongs to the classic pattern of Cockney rhyming slang, where a phrase is chosen because its final word rhymes with the word it stands for, here ‘plate’ rhyming with ‘mate’. The term dates from the late 19th century Cockney tradition and has remained in use since. A well-known illustration of how such chains of slang work together comes from a piece of invented dialogue built entirely from rhyming pairs: “Hello my old mate (china plate), what do you say we pop around to the bar (Jack Tar).”
The phrase did not stay confined to London. British troops carried it abroad during the Anglo-Boer War, and it took particularly firm root in South Africa, where the shortened form ‘china’ is still especially popular. The same rhyming-slang meaning of ‘mate’ is also recorded in Australian usage, showing how far the pattern travelled with British speakers.
The shift from the full phrase to the single word ‘china’ followed a common habit in rhyming slang, where the rhyming half of the phrase is dropped once listeners already know the pairing, leaving only the first word to carry the meaning. That is why ‘my old china’ is heard far more often today than the complete ‘my old china plate’. For more on how phrases like this one are built, see Cockney Rhyming Slang, and for the shortened form itself, see My old china.