Tongzhi is the Chinese word for "comrade". It has taken on various meanings in various contexts since the 20th century. The term was introduced into Vernacular Chinese by Sun Yat-sen as a way of describing his followers. Following the establishment of the People's Republic of China, "tongzhi" was used to mean "comrade" in the Communist sense: it was used to address almost everyone, male and female, young and old. In recent years, however, this meaning of the term has fallen out of common usage, except within Chinese Communist Party discourse and among people of older generations. In contemporary Macau and Hong Kong, the term mainly refers to LGBT people instead of the traditional political usage.
Usage in Party Politics
It remains in use in a formal context among political parties in both mainland China and Taiwan. In the Communist Party of China, the labelling of a person as a "comrade" is especially significant for a person who has been denounced or demoted, because it indicates that the party has not completely rejected the person as "one of its own". In Taiwan, it also remains in formal usage in party politics. For example, Frank Hsieh said, after losing the 2008 Republic of China presidential election: "很多同志希望我能夠留到五月二十五日". In October 2016, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued a directive urging all 90 million party members to keep calling each other "comrades" instead of less egalitarian terms.
Military usage
The word comrade is in the regulations of the Chinese Armed Forces as one of three appropriate ways to formally address another member of the military
Usage in contemporary Macau and Hong Kong
Since the 1990s, the term is, however, increasingly being used to refer to sexual minorities mainly in Macau and Hong Kong and increasingly in Mainland China and Taiwan, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. This way of using the term was first adopted by Michael Lam, a columnist writing in Hong Kong magazine City Magazine, and popularised by the inaugural Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival 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 is preferred by LGBT communities over the term tóngxìnglìan, 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. Although it initially referred to gay and lesbian people, in recent years, the term gradually covers a wider range of meaning including "LGBTQIA". For example, Taiwan LGBT Pride parade, Asia's biggest LGBT pride parade, can be literally translated as "Taiwan Tongzhi Parade." According to Chou Wah-Shan, Tóngzhì is a very fluid term which can refer to all people who are opposed to or fall outside of heteronormativity. He views Tóngzhì as a means of signifying "politics beyond the homo-hetero duality" and "integrating the sexual into the social".
