MCLC: it's comrade to you

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: it's comrade to you
***********************************************************

Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT (5/15/14):
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/dont-call-me-dude-boss-or-br
o-its-comrade-to-you/

Don’t Call Me Dude, Boss or Bro. It’s Comrade to You.
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

Even if you think the Chinese official you’re dealing with is a bit of a
dude, a bro or a boss — don’t call him any of those things. Such terms are
signs of unwanted bureaucratic sectarianism and ganglike behavior,
according to the Communist Party discipline inspection commission of
Guangdong Province.

In what reads a little like a Miss Manners manual — but with a
distinctively Chinese Communist twist — a notice
<http://www.gdjct.gd.gov.cn/shehui/21993.jhtml> was published by the
commission on its website on Wednesday demanding greater “naming
discipline” from party members and officials, warning that using “vulgar”
terms of address in the workplace was “wrecking inner-party democracy and
damaging the image of public servants.”

So what’s an official to say, instead?

“Comrade,” according to another circular, issued by the Communist Youth
League of Yunnan Province, Global Times reported
<http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/860336.shtml>. Use the person’s name or
plain old “colleague,” the Guangdong party circular suggested.

Adding to officials’ work stress, they are to mind their manners and not
answer citizens’ queries with an unhelpful “I don’t know” or “Don’t ask
me,” according to instructions issued in February in Pengshan County in
Sichuan Province, Global Times reported.

The focus on forms of address and behavior is all part of a broader push
by President Xi Jinping to combat the “four winds
<http://news.ifeng.com/mainland/xijinping/detail_2013_06/18/26534984_0.shtm
l>” that strafe the party and give it a bad odor among the people —
formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance — as the party worries
that members who abuse their power and privileges are turning the people
against it.

Another challenge is title inflation. Chinese news outlets have recently
run articles explaining that people are anxious to avoid appearing
disrespectful to their superiors or other power-holders, leading them to
exaggerate the person’s title
<http://china.huanqiu.com/article/2014-05/4995713.html>. “Bumping into
someone by accident you can only go up, not down,” is the attitude, Global
Times said, citing a report in the Southern Weekly newspaper.

But even for slang titles like “dude,” there is a hierarchy. Here’s a
brief glossary of what not to call officials from now on: (Note that many
of these titles do not apply to women, but no female variations were
offered by the circulars.)

* Dude (哥们, gemer, literally “older brother”). Applied to someone who is
your inferior in rank.
* Brother or bro (兄弟, xiongdi, “older younger brother”). Also your
inferior.
* Boss (老板, laoban, “old board,” as in chairman of the board.) Applied to
your superior.
* Group leader — though also the boss of a criminal gang (老大, laoda, “old
big”). Also a superior.

What to call him — or her — instead?

* Colleague (同事, tongshi, “same affairs”). Unisex and egalitarian, this
theoretically works for everyone.
* Comrade (同志, tongzhi, “same ideal”). Also unisex and more radically
egalitarian, in decades past this was a near-universal form of address.

One complication: These days “comrade” has been appropriated by advocates
of gay rights to refer to (usually male) homosexuals. An etiquette
minefield looms. Advice, Miss Manners?