On his nomination papers, chief executive-elect Donald Tsang Yam-kuen put 'politician', in English, as his occupation. There is nothing wrong with that, as he has been engaged full-time in politics as a principal official, and principal officials are not civil servants. As chief executive, his work will be fully devoted to practising the art of government.
But the term 'politician' has presented a translation problem. In the Chinese language, there are only two common translations, whose Putonghua transliterations are zhengke and zhengzhijia.
The trouble is that while 'politician' has two meanings - a neutral one that refers to a person who takes part in politics, and a negative one that denotes a person who follows politics as a career regardless of principle - zhengke's negative connotation predominates.
By contrast, zhengzhijia is used to describe an accomplished political leader, and carries a meaning akin to 'statesman' in English. There is no comparable term in Chinese that renders only the neutral meaning.
Mr Tsang thought about using zhenzhirenwu, or political figure, but decided not to, as it refers to a person who takes part in politics, but not necessarily full time.
The lack of a proper Chinese translation for 'politician' says a lot about the Chinese political culture. The imperial days ended less than a century ago, in 1911. For thousands of years before, successive emperors ruled the country as an extension of their family.
The job of governance was delegated to a class of officials selected on the basis of their literary merits and moral conduct, as assessed in imperial examinations. They were answerable to the emperor, and did not regard themselves as civil servants or politicians.