(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 through their own web sites and apps. But then they want to integrate their e-commerce with any third-party apps seamlessly, so customers can buy stuff from JD.com conveniently from any third-party apps. They call this "无界零售" (Boundless Retail). To do this, they set up a platform called "京东开放平台" (JD Open Platform, http://open.jd.com/). This platform is cited as an example of Zhong Tai.
So in summary for my quick research, Zhong Tai is not a technology per se, but a layered approach for big companies to encapsulate their key business components to callable components to be integrated with various first party or third party frontend apps. So it speeds time to market for first-party apps, and allow quick integration with third-party apps.
Reference:
[1] https://www.zhihu.com/question/57717433 (互联网公司中所谓中台是怎么定义的？)
[2] https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/zhong-tai-radical-approach-enterprise-it