Editor’s Note: The Word of the Week comes from China Digital Space’s Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and frequently encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China’s online “resistance discourse,” used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness. If you are interested in participating in this project by submitting and/or translating terms, please contact the CDT editors at CDT [at] chinadigitaltimes [dot] net.
A play on the word “traitor” (卖国贼 màiguózéi), a patriotraitor is someone who betrays his/her country’s interests while outwardly professing patriotism. Netizens pejoratively refer to people who are uncritically nationalistic as either patriotraitors or shit youth; a patriotraitor has more of an ulterior motive and puts on more of an act than a shit youth.
Fudan University student Tao Weishuo earned the title of patriotraitor in a 2009 town hall with Barack Obama, where he objected to President’s discussion of Internet censorship.
