(NOTE: this was intended as a comment for https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/zhong-tai-radical-approach-enterprise-it, but it was labelled as spam there :( )
After some Googling, it turns out Zhong Tai is "中台" in Chinese. "中台", literally close to "middle platform", seems a derived word from "前台" (front platform/frontend) and "后台" (back platform/backend). So Zhong Tai seems to mean common business logic software components that lie between the frontend (Apps, Web etc), and backend (stable enterprise platforms including ERP and finance).
By introducing this "middle platform" concept, Zhong Tai followers seem to divide the traditional application layer to two parts: 1) web interface or apps that form the new thin application layer. Note the apps here include both first-party apps and many more third party apps. 2) the core application layer components that provide open API for integration with individual apps.
For example, JD.com (a Chinese e-commerce provider) used to get their customer traffic throu