“Are you a member of Communist party?” This is a very normal question, but it has become an incredibly popular internet meme on the Chinese language internet.
From Mop:
A Journalist was inquired if he is a Communist Party member.
On November 4, 2009, a newspaper in Zhengzhou city published a post, “‘Animal Control Office’ took money from people, but did not do anything”. In the post, the journalist asked how the “animal control fee” was used and where the money went. The journalist interviewed the person in charge of the “animal control office”, Wang Ping. The journalist hoped the office would publish the budget, but Wang asked the journalist to go to the local Bureau of Finance.
The journalist got in touch with the person who was in charge of the fee, Wang Guanqi, through the Zhengzhou Bureau of Finance. However, Wang didn’t answer the journalist’s question. Instead, he asked, “Are you a Communist Party member? If you want to ask for the expenses of the fee, then you must have the permission of the Communist committee and spokesman! It violates the rules that you come and interview me first!”
As soon as the report was published, “Are you a Communist party member?” became a new catchword online. This “stunning sentence” has completely shocked people.
Comment from a netizen: OMG. Is the information of the “Animal Control Office” only open to Communist Party members? Wang Guanqi has no common sense. The money in his hands are taxes, and the taxpayers are not all Communist Party members. People who don’t join the party want to know where their money goes through the journalist. It is proper and also a right based on the law. The right to interview is written in law. None of the power of the Communist committee or spokesmen is bigger than the law.
Extensions: Stunning words appeared frequently on the Internet recently.
In June of this year, a journalist in Zhengzhou City interviewed the deputy director of Zhengzhou Municipal Planning Bureau, Dai Jun. The journalist asked director Dai why villas were built in the place designated for economically affordable housing. The director answered very directly: “Are you prepared to speak for the Communist party, or for the people?” The shocking “official responses” were the rage all over the country.
On October 27 at a Guangzhou traffic remediation conference, when a reporter questioned whether advance publication of road closures is needed, a middle-aged man who was in the meeting suddenly said: “So do I have to tell you whether or not I need to shit or whether my shit smells?” Once the phrase was reported, this person was immediately labeled as a “shit official”, this phrase was known as “the most niu official response.”
Now, including “Are you a Communist Party member?”, there are three niu officials and three shocking phrases. One netizen commented that the officials and the phrases all showed the same “Pride and Prejudice”.
Comments from Mop:
sai709394:
I’m not a Communist party member.
针砭时弊，扬善除恶：
From now on, I’ll work hard, join the party, and be a supervisor!
无尘少林：
You are a National party member
江湖舍利子：
The (Communist) party members are awesome!!!
在线别动队：
The Communist party is a underworld gang.
吸烟de老马：
I’m not a party member, and I know nothing…
风在天空吗：
People who live in the area where I live always say that government officials are rascals with credentials.
See also: “Are you a Party Member — The Latest Internet Meme?” (ChinaGeeks)
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Are you a CCP member? IF NO! Then you have no say in China!
pusan playa please make your comment, you make hilarious comments. im serious if you thought of doing stand up comedy i would so go watch it
Sofawolf! ha! All obey the technowolf!
[comment hidden for too many negative votes -- click to view]
It’s clearly wrong but why is it such a surprise? Everybody knows that if you aren’t a party member you have lots of restrictions on you,, especially regarding influence and work.
I’ll go back to watching The Founding of a Republic. I can’t wait to see if the CPC is gonna win it,, and if Mao will keep chainsmoking throughout the movie.
Shouldn’t it be called ‘Founding of the People’s Republic?’ – from my understanding the ‘Republic’ is situated just beside Fujian.
To be utterly smartass, I note that the Chinese title 建国大业 has no word that can really be translated as “republic”. A more literal translation would be “The Great Task of Founding a Country” (thanks Wikipedia).
But then, that’s how movie titles work, isn’t it. Literal translations are often too bland (whoever translated “The Day after Tommorrow” as 后天 needs to develop some artistic license), though sometimes they do get too figurative (“Pan’s Labyrinth” does not have a character named Pan, he’s just a faun).
“Founding of a Republic” seems like a nice, balanced translation — a literal one would be too Chinese-ish to attract much anglophone audience.
Actually I think it is a terrible title, every time I see it I think “Birth of a Nation” in my head. :<
What about “How the Commie won the war”?
I doubt it will attract much of an audience no matter what. I have a basic knowledge of the events back then but I’ve got to admit the movie left me utterly confused about what was going on and why several times. Especially in the beginning. I can only imagine how people with little China-experience will feel when watching. I guess “Founding of a country” might contradict the 5000 years of culture claim a bit too. But on the other hand they just celebrated the “country’s” 60 year birthday.
Fujian. Snakehead Central.
Chang Le, Fujiang, Namping, etc. And most other grubby cities close to Fuzhou. Oh, I forgot Mawei.
Political news is no good, it will make ChinaSmack go HTTP erroer 500
I doubt it. Even Xinhuanet has more than four news articles on this incident and google gives 30k results on “王冠旗 共产党员”(Wang Guanqi Communist Party member). Political news in chinaSMACK is no more than translation of Chinese sources and comments here are relatively tame as compared to Chinese discussions.
The 500 error was due to insufficient server resources. You can help us upgrading the hosting plan by purchasing chinaSMACK t-shirts or donating. Thanks!
So it was coincidence that CM was down on the anniversary of the day of the Gate of Heavenly Peace incident?
Sorry but what’s CM? You mean chinaSMACK? HTTP 500 error is an Internal server error which means the server has problems in responding to requests (but there’s not problem in connecting to the server):
http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E500.html
You get “connection timed out” or bad gateway 502 error when the visited sites are GFWed.
Oops, comment FAIL, let’s try this once again.
Yes, I mean China’s Mack. :)
I’m talking of pages that are being (D)DOSed.
“I’m talking of pages that are being (D)DOSed.”
I don’t know. I was traveling and didn’t follow chinaSMACK then. This site has a lot of sensational posts/comments and it could equally be other reasons than politics that attract hackers, such as animal abuse (a post in June 3rd is about dog killing) and racism (how are you doing, Ms Luo?). Hope people will get more rational and realize chinaSMACK only translates posts and what presented here is not the whole picture.
Or maybe you’ll have to be a party member to read it…
Only party members are politically reliable, because who fights for the right is always right and therefore the party is always right.
All Chinese who love the country and are concerned about the destiny of the nation should turn out as one in the sacred people’s movement under the banner of the holy party.
The CCP has dynamically advanced along the road of socialism over the past more than six decades and has stood an invulnerable fortress of socialism, drawing the attention of the international community.
Since its foundation, the PRC has energetically pushed forward the cause of socialism, fathered by Chairman Mao, the nation’s beloved, respected father.The communist idea in the PRC has served as the basic line and main principle for the building of the socialist state and its activities and it provided a sure guarantee for the victory of the cause of socialism.
Socialist China is a publicly recognized political and ideological power.
The CCP has achieved the unity and cohesion of all the people in thinking and purpose based on the communist idea.
The People’s Liberation Arm has demonstrated its might as an invincible army which no army of any country can match in idea and faith.
It’s a fact that the government of the PRC is absolutely trusted and supported by the people. The Chinese people are bringing about fresh innovations and performing exploits day by day in the drive to open the gate to a thriving nation in 2012, true to the plan and intention of Mao Zedong, chairman of the Communist Party of China.
I don’t think you could push that joke any closer to the edge.
That is sensational!
It’s kinda scary when you have to read almost the full text before you can decide for certain if it’s written by a true believer or someone being ironic.
…and in 2012 they save the day.
Someones been watching too much CCTV.
Should be interesting if China ever becomes a democracy, as the officials would have to change the way they treat journalists.
There’s a party in my pants and *everyone is invited
*women only.
Is there a dic-tator calling the shots in your party?
Want to meet a Communist Party member? Check China Smack Personals!
(my mother and father in law are members :)).
What’s really funny is that this guy freaked out and acted like he was guilty even though journalists in China aren’t a threat to officials and politicians. It just shows how weak and useless he is, little bitches like that wouldn’t survive for a week in a real democracy. Real journalists do everything they can to humiliate and destroy politicians and officials, only the strongest survive. Your wuss leaders would shit their pants in terror if they ever got interviewed by a Taiwanese or Korean journalist.
Try chinaSMACK Perso…wait, are you a Communist Party member?
wanna conduct some closer examinations even if youre not a cp member? try chinasmack personals…
I don’t get it why everybody is acting all so shocked…
this is something that was always there. Same thing happened in Mao’s time, same happened in Jiang Jieshi’s Nationalistic time “Are you a KMT member?”, same happened in the Qing Dynasty “are you an imperial member?”…
So the particular bureau is not answerable to the Laobaixing? the general public and layman???
Why make accountability and transparency the exclusive right of a particular group in society. It should be if you pay tax, you as the taxpayer should know where your money is being spent and the right to ask simple questions.
That’s because they are their own class. And because this class has privileged this results in a class strugle and therefore sooner or later there will be a communist revolution,… wait what?
un movimiento de la gente se juntado
peleando liberando los pueblos encarcelados
golpe de estado y seramos independiente
es hora de revolucion nuevamente!
Or you know, bitch about on the internet and keep letting the greedy old bastardos steam roll us over.
the question is,
who in China is NOT a CCP member?
I’ll take this one. The CCP numbers around 75 million members so by a quick calculation that leaves 1350-75 equals 1275 million Chinese people without a membership card. Quite the number of people who don’t have a say.
Don’t you need to be a member in order to get certain degrees?
The Gravatar.com thingy is making the loading of this website very very very slow…
If Communist Party citizens are the only one’s who are allowed to ask questions and get answers, then it sounds like there’s no reason for none Communist Party citizens in China to pay taxes.
Did someone forget they live in Communist China? Oh, yes they did. The right to know? No, people have whatever right the party gives them. Don’t like it, consider having a revolution and switching to a democracy.
You can support the Chinese people, or you can support the Communist party. Two different things. Nationalism = communist party at this point.
Whoa, hang on there internet warrior liberal from half way across the globe.
Hey man I used to live in China, and still visit relatives there. Those people do not shape the government policies which define China to outsiders. The government is a closed oligarchy. It’s more efficient, sure, but certainly different than a democracy.
Plus I’m all for the work-together style society. Since life is not a zero-sum game, we could certainly gain more by being unified, but there’s always going to be some fucker fucking it up. So in a way, yes I’d love to have an ideal communist government. However take the prisoner’s dilemma as an example. It only takes one asshole to screw everyone over. You adopt an authoritarian gov’t and someone is going to try to take advantage of all that power because people are not evil, but stupid. That’s simple economics.
Please do not misappropriate scientific concept that you do not fully understand, especially when information on the internet is so easy to find wikipedia article on Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Yes, I do have a bug up my ass. :)
Right and how did I misappropriate it?
PD simply does not apply in this case. To each according to his need, from each according to his abilities does tend to create free loaders who does not cooperate, but this does not automatically make PD.
Among other requirements, PD is not a cooperative game. Players make independent decisions and can’t communicate with each other. Moreover, it’s not just incentive for defection. In PD, the relative utilities must satisfy: defection against cooperation>mutual cooperation>mutual defect>cooperation against defection.
There are other points but game theory is not a social science, it’s precise formulation in applied mathematics with implications in social sciences.
Quote from wiki
“In casual usage, the label “prisoner’s dilemma” may be applied to situations not strictly matching the formal criteria of the classic or iterative games, for instance, those in which two entities could gain important benefits from cooperating or suffer from the failure to do so, but find it merely difficult or expensive, not necessarily impossible, to coordinate their activities to achieve cooperation.”
I was referring to the situations in which cooperation trumps individual pursuits. In order for cooperation to work, everyone must cooperate, and on a massive scale some people will not cooperate. Therefore cooperation must be forced and that’s what we see in China. We see an authoritarian/communist gov’t. However anything forced will always be less efficient than something natural because it requires active management.
Also I want to add to below, before you start implying that I’m some misinformed “internet warrior liberal” please at least make a better argument than name calling.
I just wish they’d give some notice when they decide to cut the water in my district.
happened to me during a bout of the green apple squirts. unpleasant experience.
Meh. Nothing wrong about it.
Since communist-party members are all sitting in the same boat, they will make sure that any ‘changes’ through bothering questions will not affect the party’s grip on power, and through this, the stability of the country.
Thats why the quality of the questions will increase and the solutions will actually be applicable and useful.
not like the common plebs and retarded liberal intellectuals who are shortsighted and stupid like their counterparts from all around the world.
‘Hurr i haet my gobbernmeant bacause thiers stuppid and i can get no beer to dirnk urrrrzz durrrrrrr.’
this democratic ‘criticism’ is as useful as a second asshole.
I’m a fucking elitist. I know.
Naw you are not leftist, but just a totalarian, some abnormal guy who like to get torture by dictators, or just a communist party member in disgusie.
wut? since when did I say that I’m a leftist? I fucking hate leftists. Here and Anywhere.
I have always claimed that I’m a ultra-conservative elitist who is wishing the old monarchy and the nobility back. Fuck the French Revolution! Fuck Rosseau! Fuck Marx!
At least back then, there was actually quality and pragmatism, and not just stupid populism for retarded hippies and leftist intelligansia.