(Untitled)

[gelishan]

Quick questions

Comments

[former_pirate]

You can't be a guomin of a city, for example.

[gelishan]

So "gongmin" is kind of a generic word for citizen of anywhere, be it city, county, country, world, etc?

[former_pirate]

Yeah, see the comment below mine about citizen vs national (I suddenly thought of that late last night but this morning I have been beaten to writing it down) - you can be a gongmin of both Shanghai and China, but only a guomin of China.

City-states like Monaco might be a bit of an edge case. Does anyone know off-hand the terminology used in Singapore? Not terribly important to your question, though.

[llary]

In English I guess the closest translations would be 公民 = national, 國民 = citizen.

If you think about what those terms mean, 'nationality' is used in a legal sense and describes simply membership of a state.

'Citizen' has political connotations and refers more to membership of a social group.

Therefore a foreigner might be a national but not a citizen.

[gelishan]

Thanks so much!