Comrade - Chinese Usage

Chinese Usage

In Chinese, the translation of comrade is "同志" (pinyin: tóng zhì), literally meaning "(people with) the same spirit, goal, ambition, etc." It was first introduced in the political sense by Sun Yat-sen to refer to his followers.

The Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), which was co-founded by Sun Yat-Sen, has a long tradition of using the term Tongzhi (comrade) to refer to its members, usually as a noun rather than a title; for example, a KMT member would say "Mr. Chang is a loyal and reliable comrade."

Nevertheless, the term was promoted most actively by the Communist Party of China during its struggle for power. It was used both as a noun and as a title for basically anyone in mainland China after the People's Republic of China was founded. For example, women were nü tongzhi (female comrade), children were xiao tongzhi (little comrade) and seniors were lao tongzhi (old comrade). However, after the 1980s and the onset of China's market-oriented reforms, this term has been moving out of such daily usage. It remains in use as a respectful term of public address among middle-aged Chinese and members of the Communist Party of China. Within the Communist Party, failure to address a fellow member as tóng zhì is seen as a subtle but unmistakable sign of disrespect and enmity.

At party or civil meetings, the usage of the term has been retained. Officials often address each other as Tongzhi, and thus the usage here is not limited to Communist Party members alone. In addition, Tongzhi is the term of preference to address any national leader when their titles are not attached (e.g., Comrade Mao Zedong, Comrade Deng Xiaoping).

Chinese territories such as Hong Kong and Macau do not have comrade in its popular vernacular due to longtime administration by foreign Western powers which instilled a different language paradigm in the natives of those regions.

Since the 1990s, the term is, however, increasingly being used to refer to sexual minorities in Greater China, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. This use of the term was first adopted at the inaugural Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in Hong Kong in 1989, with the aim of presenting same-sex relationships are positive and suggesting solidarity between LGBT people, while also providing an indigenous term to capture the Chinese experience of same-sex love; it also puns on tóngxìnglìan (同性戀), the formal (if clinical and disfavored) term for homosexuality. It is preferred by LGBT communities over the term tóngxìnglìan (同性戀), the formal word for homosexuality, which is seen as being too clinical and having pathological connotations. The use of tongzhi over tóngxìnglìan roughly parallels the replacement of "homosexual" with "gay" in the Western discourse. In recent years, Western terms such as "gay" and "LGBT" are also increasingly used within China and Taiwan.