Political party in Chinese 党 .黨

[siledouyaoai]

I came across the complex character for 党 (political party) the other day， being.黨， 黑(black) under the phonetic 尚, as opposed to 儿（people) under a 尚。It seems interesting to me how changing a character can make so much difference to it's connotation, from gang, darkness, conspiracy, to something more neutral or positive, implying the people are able to participate in government. According to Wenlin 党 came into popular usage around 500AD. After some searching, people online were claiming that there is only the simplified versionlink, so i'm interested, what is used in Hong Kong and Taiwan? And are there any other characters like this that have significantly different connotations after simplification? I wonder what influence this has on how people think about the word party.

It's interesting how in the sentence 君子和而不同，群而不黨 using 党 would kind of change things

[Hofmann]

...Well, here goes.

According to 教育部異體字字典,

「党」為「黨」之異體。黨，《說文解字．黑部》：「黨，不鮮也，從黑尚聲。」朋黨之黨，《說文解字．手部》錄之，云：「攩，朋群也，從手黨聲。」但後世乃多以「黨」代「攩」。至於從人之「党」，則見於俗寫，《宋元以來俗字譜》引《太平樂府》、《目連記》、《金瓶梅》、《嶺南逸事》，皆作「党」，民國二十四年部頒第一批簡體字，即用「党」，日本亦用此形，見《角川漢和况典．小部》、《中日朝漢字字形對照》，大陸《簡化字總表．第一表》亦取用之，此蓋早見於文獻，自當收錄。

＃「党」另兼正字。

And about 党,

覑姓。如宋代有党進。

Apart from that, the connotations of 黑 to you might be different from those of others, or those of people who used 黨 for 攩.

[xiaocai]

The same character can mean different things under different back round. Just like 微 in 微斯人，吾谁与归 does not carry the same meaning as the 微 in 微服私访. The emperor did not visit pay a visit to his people naked, which is just going to attract more attention.