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"Communist bandit" () is an
anti-communist Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...
epithet An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...
directed at members of the
Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...
. The term originated from the Nationalist Government in 1927. Nowadays outside
mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
, some Chinese people use the term "中共" (literally "Chinese Communist") to refer to Communist China or the Chinese Communist Party. It could also be translated to the English term "''
commie Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a so ...
''".


Etymology

The characters for "Communist bandits", or ''gòngfěi'', can be analysed in the following manner: # ''Gòng'' () is a shorter writing for the term meaning "
communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
" (共產主義). # ''Fěi'' () means "bandits". The term of ''fěi'' to excoriate the adversary was first used during the Warlord Era, in the form ''feifei'', or "bandit troops".


History

The term of "Communist bandits" to describe the
Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...
was began in the tumultuous years of the
Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on m ...
between the Nationalists and the Communists. On July 15, 1947, Document 0744 ordered the Communist Party and its forces to be called "Communist bandits" as a form of
rectification of names The rectification of names () is originally a doctrine of feudal Confucian designations and relationships, behaving accordingly to ensure social harmony. Without such accordance society would essentially crumble and "undertakings would not be comp ...
, to the exclusion of all other terms, such as "Red bandits" (in Chinese 赤匪). Along with the term ''fei'', the term was used in official documents to describe the authorities established on
Mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
and their agencies, and in several slogans such as "Fight against Gongfei's Animalistic Life". In the 1980s, the term was replaced by "Chinese Communist Authorities". The term is used today as an insult against Beijing authorities, their sympathizers or just chinese mainlanders, particularly by Taiwanese independentists and Republic of China supporters. In 1996,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
halted sales of its
Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...
operating system in mainland China due to discoveries that it contained the term in Chinese-language
input method An input method (or input method editor, commonly abbreviated IME) is an operating system component or program that enables users to generate characters not natively available on their input devices by using sequences of characters (or mouse o ...
software bundled with the operating system following police raids on computer stores. In addition, the term is also used towards non-Chinese communists or communist-governed countries, such as ''Yuenán gòngfei'' (, directed at
Communist Party of Vietnam The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), also known as the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), is the founding and sole legal party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Founded in 1930 by Hồ Chí Minh, the CPV became the ruling party of North ...
and the Vietnamese people), or ''Běihán gòngfei'' (, directed at
Workers' Party of Korea The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) is the founding and sole ruling party of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, commonly known as North Korea. Founded in 1949 from the merger of the Workers' Party of North Korea and the Workers' Party of ...
and the North Koreans). In May 2020, it became known that
YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
had been deleting any use of the term since October 2019. Comments containing the phrase would disappear without a given reason shortly after being posted.
Alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
, owner of YouTube, said the removal of such comments was "an error".


Popular culture

There is a pastry shop in
Chiayi Chiayi (, Taigi POJ: ''Ka-gī''; ), officially known as Chiayi City, is a city located in the plains of southwestern Taiwan. Formerly called ''Kagee'' during the late Qing dynasty and ''Kagi'' during the Japanese era (), its historical name i ...
, Taiwan named 共匪餅 meaning "Communist Bandit Pastries” which makes light of the martial law era epithet.


See also

* Mandarin Chinese profanity against Communists *
Communization Communization (or communisation in British English) mainly refers to a contemporary communist theory in which there is a mixing-up of insurrectionist anarchism, the communist ultra-left, post-autonomists, anti-political currents, groups like ...
*
Communist society In Marxist thought, a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of ...
*
Communist Party of the Republic of China The Communist Party of the Republic of China () was a political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was officially registered on 31 March 2009 by the Ministry of the Interior, making it the 147th registered political party in the count ...


References

{{wiktionary Anti-communism in China Anti-communist terminology Mandarin words and phrases White Terror (Taiwan)