"China" vs. "My / Our Country"
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Mark Metcalf wrote:
I have to agree with Mark's UVA colleague that, in most cases, "wǒguó" 我国 (lit., "my/our country") should not be translated into English as "my country", although it is common for most bilingual speakers of Chinese to do so. On the other hand, Zhōngguó 中国 (lit., "central country"), should be translated into English as "China", and vice versa.
This is an issue that has bothered me for decades. Just when do Chinese choose one of these expressions over the other?
My intuition is that they tend to use wǒguó 我国 more when they want to be sentimental and patriotic, whereas Zhōngguó 中国 seems to be more straightforward, neutral, and political.
I asked my colleague, Jing Hu, a lecturer on Chinese at Penn, her opinion:
What do you think?
Would you ever use wǒguó 我国? If so, when / why?
I don't think that the distribution between Zhōngguó 中国 and wǒguó 我国 is purely random. Do you?
jing responded:
I’d never use wǒguó 我国 because I’ve been living in the U.S. for the last 22 years and now I am a U.S. citizen. And when I was a student in China, I didn’t have the “right context" to say that as a news reporter, or spokesperson, or researcher/analyzer, etc. You are right, Zhōngguó 中国 is straightforward and neutral and can be used by anyone — Chinese or non-Chinese. While wǒguó 我国 can only be used by Chinese who normally represent the Chinese government or officials… and normally in professional contexts such as government and news reports, business documents, something self-referential and from the perspective of China, such as "wǒguó rénkǒu zhèngcè 我国人口政策 ("China's population policy")… "wǒguó jīngjì fāzhǎn 我国经济发展" ("China's economic development")… "2024 nián wǒguó shēngchǎnle 3 qiān wàn liàng qìchē 2024 年 我国生产了3千万辆汽车 ("In 2024, China produced 30 million cars")… "wǒguó réngōng zhìnéng fāzhǎn hěn kuài 我国人工智能发展很快" ("China's artificial intelligence is developing rapidly")….
No, the distribution between 中国 and 我国 is not purely random.
For the record:
中国 3,020,000,000 ghits
我国 182,000,000 ghits
Selected readings
- "Xina" (11/26/18) — China
- "The transcription of the name 'China' in Chinese characters" (6/17/12)
- "Vitally worst: 'Chinese' sounds like 'to tear you to die'" (4/7/07)
- "Names of China" (Wikipedia)
Gizmo said,
September 17, 2025 @ 6:37 pm
Seems similar to Americans using "we" to talk about the actions of our country.
J.W. Brewer said,
September 17, 2025 @ 7:39 pm
It would I think be unremarkable for American students in let's say fourth or fifth grade to use the English NP "our country" to mean the U.S. in a written school assignment, but it would be weirder (absent a specific rhetorical context) for American college students to do that. Obviously, this assumes American students in a U.S. school – when I myself was that age and attending the American School in Japan with mostly-but-not-exclusively American classmates I think it would have been weird because the school's location would have made the deictic pointing less straightforward.
James said,
September 18, 2025 @ 2:12 am
As a student of Chinese (Mandarin) and having lived for many years in the PRC, something about the use of 我国 always struck me as meaning that the speaker/writer was signalling closeness to the government line or attempting to show their patriotism. I also sometimes found it similar to how in the US people originally from Central and South America often referred to their home country as "my country", which seemed odd to me since I thought the US was now "their" country.
wgj said,
September 18, 2025 @ 2:17 am
I agree that "my county" should only be used by those who has some authority in representing the land / nation / state (speaking of which, has there been a thread on the distinction of those terms?), including news announcers and reporters of state media, government officials and decision makers, as well as academics acting as consultants of government policy. It's improperly adopted by students because all (or most) of the source materials they read on politics and society are written by people of the aforementioned group, so the language of the students simply gets polluted by the language of the officials and quasi-officials, without the former even being aware of it.
The decision of using or not using "my country" is, at least in part, virtue signalling. In China, where alignment with the state is an important virtue, the term is popular; whereas in countries like the US, where (ideological) independence from the state has traditionally been an important virtue, the term is avoided. Along this scheme however, we should expect to see (wannabe) members of the MAGA movement increasingly adopting the term for virtue signalling purposes. Someone should do a study on this – or perhaps someone already has.
Specific to China, more interesting still than "my country" is the term "our country" 咱们国家, which is widely used in colloquial speech among common people. I couldn't say why "my country" has a clear political connotation but "our country" does not. Is it just usage pattern, or is it more due to the psychological distinction between "my" and "our"?
Jose said,
September 18, 2025 @ 4:56 am
This usage is probably not so dissimilar to the Japanese waga kuni 我が国, which appears in newspaper commentary regardless of the author's political inclinations and serves primarily as stylistic variation. In turn, this is likely not significantly different from a Westerner's use of 'we', 'bei uns', etc. when referring to matters concerning their own polity, even when the context doesn't involve comparison with other nations.
Victor Mair said,
September 18, 2025 @ 9:47 am
From Shuheng Zhang:
While wǒguó 我国 ("my/our country") is way too formal for colloquial use, I'd usually use guónèi 国内 ("inside the country") when I'm talking about China to someone Chinese (when my assumed identity conforms to the person who I speak with).
Victor Mair said,
September 18, 2025 @ 10:18 am
From Mark Metcalf:
[VHM: for those who are deeply interested in this topic]
I concur with your observations.
Here are some more examples from the front-page headlines earlier this month in 解放军报:
我国成功发射卫星互联网技术试验卫星
我国新一代载人运载火箭第二次系留点火试验取得圆满成功
我国成功发射遥感四十五号卫星
我国成功发射吉利星座05组卫星
我国 use appears to boil down to citing information that serves the CCP's political goals – goals that support the assertions of the CCP. While 中国历史 is used to describe general facts about Chinese history, when historical events are used to support the CCP's interpretation of history (i.e. without the CCP, the Chinese people would still be suffering) with a pinch of Han chauvinism, then that becomes 我国历史.
Tom Dawkes said,
September 18, 2025 @ 1:25 pm
This reminds me of my experience as a librarian in Cardiff University, where in the 1970s there was a large intake of students of education from West Africa and the Middle East.
I can still remember being struck by their use of "my country" when they knew I knew which country they came from. Probably it was away of signifying their attachment to their country, as they would all be writing assignments dealing with aspects of their education systems
Philip Taylor said,
September 18, 2025 @ 3:56 pm
I don't think anyone has better explained what is implied by "My country" than Buffy Sainte-Marie. She wrote, of Soldier Blue —
For the full (copyright) lyrics to the song (and the introduction above), see https://buffysainte-marie.com/?page_id=757#12
ajay said,
September 19, 2025 @ 5:21 am
Seems similar to Americans using "we" to talk about the actions of our country.
Is there a point in history at which this stops feeling natural, I wonder? If I'm talking about the UK as a British person it feels fine to say "we drive on the left" or "we have a parliamentary government". It would even feel OK to say "back in the 1980s we only had four TV channels".
But it would feel less natural to say "we introduced customs duties on sugar in 1810" or "we were at war with Spain for most of the 18th century". I think I'd say "Britain".
Is my country "we" just for things within my lifetime? Or things I can remember?
ajay said,
September 19, 2025 @ 5:23 am
"We drive on the left" is a bad example because Britain doesn't drive on the left, I and my fellow British people do.
Philip Taylor said,
September 19, 2025 @ 5:36 am
I think that your second comment illustrates that "we" does not refer to "our/my country", but rather to members of the population of that country at some point in time who were, in some sense, 'representing' their country or who were 'representative of' the citizens of their country. I would have no problem with "we drive on the left", if it was clear from the context that "we" = "Britons who are driving in the UK" (I add the "who are driving in the UK" to differentiate our hahaviour when driving at home from our behaviour when driving abroad), but I would also use "we" to refer to Britons who, acting on behalf of their country, participated in events of which I feel "we" (as Britons who are alive today) are entitled to feel pride or of which "we" ( – ditto – ) should feel ashamed.
Jerry Packard said,
September 19, 2025 @ 7:00 am
In English I use my country when I am feeling a personalized connection to the US of A and wish to emphasize that it is indeed mine, too. I would not say it is an informal usage, just more specific and precise. 我国 strikes me as at almost exactly that level of precision and specificity.
Daniel said,
September 19, 2025 @ 12:20 pm
The talk of "my country" makes me think of the noun phrase "our democracy". My impression was that this was a recent coinage in response to Donald Trump, but it turns out that it has a long history, featuring peaks in usage during both world wars. See the ngram plot.
Matthew J. McIrvin said,
September 19, 2025 @ 12:57 pm
I've seen "we" used rhetorically by Americans as the subject of actions they consider deplorable taken by the US government (the goal being to shame other Americans into active opposition, because the government's actions become a collective moral stain).
Matthew J. McIrvin said,
September 19, 2025 @ 1:01 pm
(Politically, that pejorative US use of "we" is very left-coded– the right is much more likely to characterize what they don't like as un-American and the actions of "them", not "us")
Philip Anderson said,
September 19, 2025 @ 3:57 pm
@ajay
I would have no problem with saying either “Britain drives on the left” or “we were at war with Spain”; I don’t feel the need to distinguish between the country and the nation, at least in either of those contexts. In my experience of multi-lane highways, most Britons don’t drive in the left lane, but in a middle lane (of the left-hand carriageway), so “Britain” expresses the rule rather than the behaviour.
However, given that the UK is made up of four countries, each with their own history and culture, plus devolved powers, ambiguity may arise with the scope of “we”, and even more commonly with the phrase “this country”, often used by politicians and journalists, which may refer to the UK or just to England (or Wales or Scotland, although this is usually more obvious from the context). The speaker may not even know whether particular legislation applies to the UK or just England – the England-plus mentality.
Here the situation is probably the reverse of China – “my country” is more likely to be used by ordinary people rather than politicians, let alone official representatives, sometimes with the idea that immigrants are excluded.
ajay said,
September 22, 2025 @ 6:53 am
The talk of "my country" makes me think of the noun phrase "our democracy".
But there might be a subtle difference there. "Our democracy" could be "the current condition of our country as being a democracy", rather than just a synonym for "our country". Like "our robust economy".
I think that your second comment illustrates that "we" does not refer to "our/my country", but rather to members of the population of that country at some point in time who were, in some sense, 'representing' their country or who were 'representative of' the citizens of their country.
Hence the habit which always strikes me as very odd of using "we" to mean "our national sports team". "We beat France at the weekend!" No, eleven women from your country wearing red and white shirts beat eleven women from France wearing blue and white shirts.
hello said,
October 3, 2025 @ 2:46 pm
Reminds me of colloquial usage in modern Hebrew, where people will use "הארץ" (haaretz = lit. the land) to refer to Israel in particular. This usage is related to the religious term "Land of Israel".
For more usage examples, see: https://context.reverso.net/%D7%AA%D7%A8%D7%92%D7%95%D7%9D/%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%90%D7%A0%D7%92%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%AA/%D7%91%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%A5