‘Keep calling each other ‘Comrade’’

Beijing: The ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) has asked its members to continue calling each other as ‘comrade’ after they failed to find an alternative word for it despite the term having dubious linkages to the gay community. The quintessential greeting of the left and Communist doctrines has staged a comeback in the lexicon of CPC as the party told its members to ‘keep calling each other ‘comrade”.
The party ruled that more than half of its discipline regulations were ‘outdated’ and no longer applicable after a two-year review, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Among 487 regulations to remain in use is a 49-year-old diktat that members call each other ‘comrade’, a widely used Communist Party term, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported. CPC discouraged its party members in the past few years from using the term as it has become an informal term of reference for gay people in present day China. (PTI)