The article is devoted to the description of approaches to the syntactic analysis in the Chinese language with the special attention to complement ( 补 语 bǔyǔ) as a special part of the sentence. The lack of consistency in Chinese-language teaching literature abroad is primarily due to the lack of a common concept of buyu in Chinese linguistics. An analysis of the changes that have taken place in the works of Chinese grammatists in the 20th century, as well as a comparison of the systems of sentence parts in various languages, shows that this phenomenon in Chinese syntax needs to streamline the existing terminology in order to eliminate terminological duplets (dopolnitel'niy chlen or complement) that lead to confusion or substitution of different linguistic concepts.