Talk:Local communists in Hong Kong

Untitled

This is supposingly a translation of the term "土共" from the Chinese wiki page. This term was conned sometime in 2003 and was intended as a derogatory term to refer to the pro-Beijing politicians or their supporters. As described in the talk page of the Chinese version, the Chinese term itself is not used even by the democrats themselves (and of course not by the pro-Beijing parties). It is mostly used by more radical supporters of the pro-democratic camp in smearing campaigns to attack the pro-Beijing parties and their supporters, or for stereotyping the supporters of the pro-Beijing parties in political articles (mostly on bulletin boards, but the pro-democratic Apply Daily sometimes picked up the term in news).

Specifically, the article made a number of unsubstantiated stereotypes (as the article refers), statements and allegations. The followings are some:

"Ideology" - the article listed "supporters of Chen Yun's nationalized economy" and "Maoists" as stereotypes of supporters, and that these supporters consider "communist party" is a "measure of all things". But these are contradictory - the communist party itself followed mostly Deng Xiaoping's version of market economy today.

The article also stereotypes the supporters as hardline extremists and accountable for vandalism of Democratic Party bulletin boards. In fact vandalism exists for bulletin boards of both political camps and the culprit are seldomly caught.

"Stereotypes" -

"Victoria Park uncles" - There are limited number of such 'Victoria Park uncles', a local term to describe a distinguished group of (mostly) aged persons who gather in Victoria Park every Sunday to protest to members of Democratic camp in the City Forum held here, often by yelling at them during their speech. The act could hardly be described as "waving flags in support of the Communists" as there seems no proclaimed "Communist" appearing in city forum. Their acts are not acclaimed by most in Hong Kong. Given their limited number, unless "indigenous communists" refers to this specific class of persons, this can hardly be described as a stereotype of pro-Beijing supporters in Hong Kong, except for the purpose of smearing the latter.

"United front officials" - This is described as "united front officials sent by the Communist Party of China to work in Hong Kong trade unions, or indigenous Hongkongers trained thereby" - "officials sent by the Communist Party" to work in Hong Kong can hardly be described by "indegenous". Also there seems little evidence of "training: of local people by the Communist Party to work in Hong Kong trade unions".

"'Patriotic' entrepreneurs" - The description are unsubstantiated allegations which seem trying to protray an association of businessmen (which mostly support Government rather than the pro-democratic camp) with criminals, or that these persons are pro-Government with a view to illicit advantages. Firstly, even the above is true, a person who is not a Communist himself should not be "indigenous communists". Secondly, as with the allegations above, the one is also no substantiated. In fact, most businessmen tends to be conservative in political reforms to minimise risks.

The above suggest that the entry is seriously POVed, and its contents are oriented towards smearing the pro-Beijing camp. As suggested in the Chinese talk page, if this is intended as a general description of the pro-Beijing camp, a neutral term (such as "Pro-Beijing/Government camp") should be used, with the unsubstantiated stereotyping replaced by a more NPOV descriptions.) If such entries are considered appropriate in wikipedia (which I don't think so), perhaps an balancing entry of "Fake democratic camp that subverts China and creates turnmoil in Hong Kong" could be added. :)

Hlaw 11:01, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. I translated the page because I thought it described interesting stereotypes, for example, the Victoria Park uncles. I would think there is something to salvage here and made NPOV. If it is not useful at all, perhaps we should delete it? -- Kaihsu 19:33, 2004 Aug 30 (UTC)

"Victoria Park uncles" is one political phenomenon, but there is another article on it. Either this could be rewritten as a general description of the pro-Beijing camp (but with major revisions removing most of the descriptions, and change of title), or alternatively to describe existence of the Chinese term itself as an objective fact (similar to the treatment of Gwailo). In a similar sense as it would not be appropriate to list the term Gwailo as one of the ethnic groups in Hong Kong, this should perhaps be removed from "list of political groups", etc. Hlaw 05:50, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It is not in the "list of political groups", but in "Politics of Hong Kong#Political pressure groups and leaders" -- Kaihsu 13:07, 2004 Sep 1 (UTC)