The Chinese roots of ‘gung-ho’ as Trump and Xi look to shared history

Trump’s mention of a ‘Chinese phrase’ may have puzzled some, but the US Marine Corps adopted gung-ho from the name of wartime cooperatives Chinese viewers watching Donald Trump welcome Xi Jinping to the White House on Thursday may have been puzzled by the US president’s reference to the “Chinese phrase” gung-ho. Turning to Baidu – or increasingly, Doubao, the country’s most popular AI chatbot – they may well have asked: what Chinese expression is he referring to? The word does have a genuine Chinese origin though. Gung-ho, or in pinyin, gong he (工合) is short for gongye hezuoshe (工业合作社) – literally, “industrial cooperatives”. These were grass-roots labour units set up in China in 1938 to produce small industrial supplies to support the war effort against the Japanese.

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