This article argues that there are central features of Chinese English regardless of a speaker's Chinese first language (L1) or dialect. The current state of research on Chinese English is reviewed, outlining phonological, lexical, syntactical, prosodic, and discourse and pragmatic features of Chinese English. These features are categorized according to their pervasiveness based on different L1 backgrounds, to show that there are core features of Chinese English. The argument is limited by the low number of quantitative studies and the absence of large‐scale quantitative studies.