Talk:China/Archive 18

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Contents

Subject Change Proposal

Just to formalize a critical discussion, let's look at some proposals (in all of these proposals a disambiguation page will be linked to):

Proposal #1: China is a country, not sure which one:

I believe the point is that China is a country, so we can provide lots of information about it, but for modern political entities we link to another page.

Proposal #2: China is the PRC:

This pretty much speaks for itself.

Proposal #3: China links to disambiguation page

When someone looks up China, they will be taken to a disambiguation page showing all the different uses for 'China'.

Proposal #4: China is a civilization

This is the current concensus and should remain unless we can agree to something else. China as civilization should avoid current political questions, focusing instead on those aspects of Chinese society, culture, and technology that make it a civilization and have made it a civilization for thousands of years.

Proposal #5: Revert to 2004; China is an ancient cultural and geographic entity in continental East Asia

Proposal #6: China is a country, but focus on "civilization"

Proposal #11: Rename this page to "Chinese Civilization".

Proposal Discussion

Proposal #1: China is a country, not sure which one:

The biggest problem I see with this is the question of how Taiwan is handled. Do we put information about Taiwan, for example that Taiwanese people play a lot of baseball, in the article? I think we cannot unless we include with each mention of Taiwan a mention of the dispute as to whether Taiwan is part of China, and that could become tiresome. Readin (talk) 14:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't see any problem with China being a country, and it IS a country. Check Encarta, check Wordsmyth, check The Columbia Encyclopedia, even Longman Dictionary, they all suggest the same thing: China IS a country. --Quagliu (talk) 03:21, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you that China is a country. But that country is the PRC, and that is why I favor #2.Readin (talk) 15:04, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Oppose Neither ROC nor PROC are China.

Question: What is a "country", anyway? I'm not sure that I can agree with the Wikipedia article country's implication that it is exactly a state. Merriam-Webster, seems to imply a somewhat more complicated definition. How distinct are the meanings of the statements "China is a country" and "China is a civilisation?"—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 05:15, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal #2: China is the PRC:

I favor this one or #3 Readin (talk) 14:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
This article could state with a sentence like "China commonly refers to the larger of two modern political entities that use 'China' in their names and claim..." Readin (talk) 17:13, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Oppose While the PRC might consider itself China - it has many territories that it considers to be a part of it, that are not China including the region of Taiwan.--Keerllston 04:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

When you say "territories...that are not China", what do you mean by "China"? Common usage is to call the PRC China, so if a territory is part of the PRC, it is generally considered part of "China" - which is the point of having "China" link to the PRC article. As for regions like Tibet, they are part of the PRC. It should be possible to clarify that there is disagreement as to whether Tibet is really part of China or just a colony, provided you can provide reliable sources. Similarly, it can be made clear that while the PRC claims Taiwan, it doesn't actually have any control over it.
Perhaps I need to clarify that this would not be a second page for describing the PRC. Instead, a person searching for "China" would be linked to the PRC page, and there would be some disambiguations for other uses of "China". This change will require some work as this article will no longer be under "China" but only under "Chinese Civilization". As such there will need to be a scrutiny of the article to make sure all the sections are addressing the civilization, not other usages of the term "China". Readin (talk) 03:55, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Support. I frequently see magazine headlines, news headlines, book titles, etc. about the "rise of China" or "imports from China" or other U.S. relations with "China". There is never any doubt that "China" refers to the PRC. In English (and we are editing the English Wiki), "China" most commonly means "PRC". Readin (talk) 03:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Support. This is the normal usage of the word. Yes, it may not be totally satisfactory to the ROC, but that issue can be dealt with in the lead paragraph. The problem with PRC and ROC is that two governments claim to be the legitimate government of China. Normal usage and the UN both support the PRC, like it or not. Hardly anyone even pretends any more that "ROC = China".

No doubt the situation is messy, but the messiness can be dealt with in the article. There is no need to blow the article out to an even more vaguely defined and messier entity like "Chinese civilisation" merely because some people are opposed to calling the PRC "China".

There are no grounds for making "China" into an article about Chinese civilisation. If we want to do that, we should have a separate article on Chinese civilisation or Sinitic civilisation. By making "China" into "Chinese civilisation", we run the risk of expanding the article on "China" to include Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, which is absolutely unacceptable. By no stretch of the imagination (including the consumption of pork in southern Japan) can Japan be considered part of China.

Bathrobe (talk) 03:15, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal #3: China links to disambiguation page

I favor this one or #2 Readin (talk) 14:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
This is probably the best way to get NPOV. Readin (talk) 14:22, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Oppose as the least consumer friendly. The Current article has already disambiguation links at the top of the page. The current quality and depth that this article treats the topic of China is irrelevant.--Keerllston 04:12, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal #4: China is a civilization

I think the biggest problem with this is that most people expect some information on the country (PRC) when they look up 'China'. Basic information like 'Who is the president of China?' should be on the 'China' page and people would expect that answer to be Hu, not Chen. A secondary concern, though perhaps an advantage, is that describing the 'civilization' is something that requires more information than a non-expert has readily available. Questions like whether to include Japan and Korea in 'Chinese civilization' are far more difficult to answer than whether to include Japan and Korea in the country 'China' or the culture of China. This might be an advantage as it will force editors to make more frequent use of sources. Readin (talk) 14:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Who is the president of Korea? Mongolia? Is the Dalai lama the leader of Tibet?
--Keerllston 18:10, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
[Support--Keerllston 13:44, 27 November 2007 (UTC)]
The term "China on both sides of the strait" is not the only definition of China.
I think this is the best. Obviously this will have information on the PRC, as well as information on Tibet, Mongolia, Siberia, Hong Kong, etcetera and how they fit or do not fit into the idea/civilization/geographical area/empire/nation/multinatinal state/etc.
--Keerllston 18:10, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
NO, this is really minority view!! and it violates Wikipedia naming convention policy. Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions --Quagliu (talk) 03:21, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I hope I read correctly that Dwarf Kirlston supports #4. I disagree with him that #4 will require the inclusion of Tibet, Mongolia, Siberia, Hong Kong, etc.. In fact I would say most of those regions would be left out. Only Hong Kong would be a good candidate for inclusion. Better candidates for inclusion in the civilization would seem to be Taiwan and even Korea and Japan.Readin (talk) 15:04, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
You do read correctly - Any definition of China would per NPOV have to include the fact that the PRC considers itself the multinational government of China. And that the PRC's definition of China includes Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, the Muslim Region, (Inner) Mongolia and Macau- and the fact that Siberia, Outer Mongolia, Korea, Vietnam, Japan etcetera have strong "Chinese" cultural heritage.--Keerllston 20:09, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
It sounds like you're really supporting proposal #6 or #1, not #4. In #4, the claims of the PRC would be irrelevant to the "China" article, which would focus on Chinese Civilization. Instead the PRC claims would be found one of the pages linked to through disambiguation. Readin (talk) 21:58, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
China has many definitions. It is not true that "any" definition has to include the PRC claims. Some definitions obviously do, but some do not. Perhaps if we tried to use only one definition, we would need to include PRC claims. But if you look up "China" in a dictionary, you won't find a single definition. There is a good reason for that. China means too many things to be covered by a single definition. We shouldn't try to force them all into a mushy mess. We should use a disambiguation page. Readin (talk) 22:02, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
It sounds like I'm really supporting something else? I think I prefer to judge what my opinion supports from my perspective if you don't mind.--Keerllston 23:00, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
You're confusing me. On one hand you say you support #4, the proposal to have this article discuss only Chinese Civilization, but on the other hand you say we need to include all territories claimed by the PRC. Which is it you think #4 is about, the PRC, or Chinese civilization? If both, then you're not talking about #4, but something else. If what you would like to propose is not listed, please list it and we can discuss it too. Readin (talk) 02:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
East Asia is not really defined by the way - what defines East Asia? - It's not a geographical in nature - the continent does not divide itself - rather it is a culturally defined - it's what's left over from Russia, Central Asia, and the "Indies" and with China as its main entity- with many regions in dispute between what constitutes each region - these in turn are defined by whether Russia/Russian Civilization includes or not Siberia and parts of Central Asia, and whether Tibet is included in East Asia, Central Asia, or the Indies, and so on - Whether Mongolia as well is included in Central Asia, East Asia and even Russia is also debated.
Some say that before the British came to India that there was not a unity and that English is the main language of modern India.
What is China? does China include Chinese communities outside China as according to Zhongua minzu?
The Importance of treating the split between PROC and ROC in a NPOV way is not the only issue. There is a general importance of treating regions that are considered a part of China by many people but not by others- including the regions/nations/countries/civilizations/states/territories/colonies Tibet, Hong Kong, Korea, AND Taiwan.
--Keerllston 23:00, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
What relevance does your question about "East Asia" have to #4?
What is China? does China include Chinese communities outside China as according to Zhongua minzu? Are you suggesting another proposal, that the "China" article go directly to Zhongua minzu? If so, please list it as a proposal rather than obfuscating the discussion of #4. Readin (talk) 02:42, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
"[You are] obfuscating the discussion" Thank you, I appreciate your feedback.--Keerllston 04:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I hope my recent comments have helped to elucidate my argument.--Keerllston 04:54, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
There are a few problems with this formulation:
  1. It's not standard English (unless you're quoting Lucian Pye's aphorism).
  2. It doesn't resolve the disputes, but rather adds new ones.
  3. It's not what the article is about. How can a civilization be "Middle Kingdom" or "Central Country"? Does a civilization have climate and geography? Kanguole (talk) 10:54, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
1: 2 others other than Pye used that exact same sentence, furthermore it is commonly accepted that China is a civilization - in fact, one of the oldest civilizations and maybe the oldest surviving civilization.
2: None of the other one's resolve disputes, the dispute of what China is exists. No logical argument will dispute that some people people differ on: "Taiwan is (not) a part of China" - and "Tibet is (not) a part of China" and "Mongolia is (not) a part of China" and "Korea is (not) a part of China".
3: Well that depends on whether Zhonghuo is China - doesn't it? I mean China doesn't mean "Central Country" does it? - Zhonguo does - What is the reason for it being translated as being "Middle Country" if it is already "China"? the reason, is that the terms are not equal.
--Keerllston 20:38, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
It is commonly accepted that Chinese civilization is one of the oldest in the world; it is far from common to interpret "China" as the name of that civilization. I can find only one cite in Google Scholar that uses this phrase without echoing Pye, and I don't have access to the full text of that article.
If this non-standard interpretation doesn't avoid the disputes, you've sacrificed intelligibility for no gain at all. Kanguole (talk) 23:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal Support Withdrawn In Preference to 9--Keerllston 11:43, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal #5: Revert to 2004; China is an ancient cultural and geographic entity in continental East Asia

Country is not synonymous with state. Country and civilization are not mutually exclusive. Please refer to this article c.2004 and see how that was handled. --Jiang (talk) 18:31, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I pulled up a 2004 July 13 version of the article. It says China is an "ancient cultural and geographic entity in continental East Asia". This would leave some of the same disputes we now have. Does the geographic entity include Taiwan? Does it even include parts of the PRC like Tibet and Xinjiang? Reading a little further into the article, it clearly suffers from the POV that Taiwan is part of China; the dispute is not even mentioned. (I didn't check to see how it handles Tibet, Xinjiang, etc.) Readin (talk) 18:43, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Support I believe this is acceptable.--Keerllston 04:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Note: why "continental" East Asia? is this ruling out Taiwan and Hong Kong?--Keerllston 04:54, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
This one seem the most neutral so far. You can easily avoid any mentioning of the territories to the undisputed date. Like "China is the pre-1911 ancient cultural and geographical entity." Benjwong (talk) 15:43, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
The point is not to avoid talking about real disputes about the definition of china but rather to avoid disputes between editors.---Keerllston 18:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak Oppose or Oppose -Proposition #111 having been made, this one, the use of "continental East Asia", the fact that a civilization which China definitely is, is by definition a Cultural entity, etcetera.--Keerllston 18:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal #6: China is a country, but focus on "civilization"

When there is a dispute, we characterize the dispute. We don't ignore it or choose size. So the answers to "Does the geographic entity include Taiwan? Does it even include parts of the PRC like Tibet and Xinjiang?" is that some people think they do, some dont and at present the PRC controls Tibet and Xinjiang but not Taiwan.
We must keep in mind that civilizations, like nations, are imagined entities. We conceive them out of convenience (like organizing history book chapters topically vs. chronologically), but we must still keep in mind that they are socially constructed. What the average peasant living in 400 BC viewed villagers beyond the next mountain and how the same peasant viewed villagers hundreds of villages away may be less different than we think.
I support 1 and 4. Define China as a country and focus on the "civlization." Disambiguation pages are for mutually exclusive entities. Sometimes, mentions of "China" are inherently vague in context, so where would we pipelink these to? And even if we refer to China in historical context, we may be referring to the political entity (Han Wudi became emperor of China) rather than the civilization as a whole.--Jiang (talk) 04:02, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
This gets us right back to the problem of what and how to include things, and in particular what the map will look like. In fact the map will get very messy as the legend and caption will have to note every single disputed area, with some areas having multiple disputes. Readin (talk) 15:04, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
That can never be settled because there are disputed territories. this map does a good job outlining them all.--Jiang (talk) 10:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Oppose China is not simply a country, PRC is not China.--Keerllston 04:08, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

PRC is not China, but it's a new name for the country called China which is recognized by everyone, and everyone on earth. If you insist China should be something else, then you must be violating Wikipedia naming convention. --Quagliu (talk) 04:20, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
country doesnt automatically imply PRC. the Chinese name for China is "zhongguo". "guo"=state/country. We dont always use the term to refer to the PRC. For example, "zhongguo cai" (Chinese food) had nothing to do with the PRC. the term predates the PRC by thousands of years.--Jiang (talk) 10:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
What is your definition of country? is it "A nation state, a political entity asserting ultimate authority over a geographical area."?--Keerllston 11:44, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
There's more than that. Not only state, but land and people. We may benefit from being intentionally ambiguous as to what this means.--Jiang (talk) 00:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
While a policy of intentional ambiguity might work well and might be integrated into political intentions it does not work well integrated with those of wikipedia - an encyclopedia should not be ambiguous - it can be imprecise where the subject matter is imprecise, but it should not be ambiguous.--Keerllston 00:14, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
An encyclopedia should reflect reality. If it is not defined in the real world, we say so. We do not try to create a definition that does not exist. Our "definition" can be only as specific as real world consensus allows. Anything else has to be attributed to specific viewpoints.--Jiang 02:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal #7 and also #111 (binary):China is a civilization in Asia, and also the countries, geographical area, society, and culture associated with this civilization.

  • Support as Nominator--Keerllston 11:37, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Proposal support withdrawn in preference of 9.--Keerllston 11:43, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal #8: China is a civilization in Asia, and also [...] nation or nations,, ethnicity or ethnicity [...] and the geographical area associated with this civilization

    • After personal insatisfaction with the [#7] above, I made it even longer and difficult but more NPOV.
      "China is a civilization in Asia, and also the countries, nation or nations, ethnicity or ethnicities, culture or cultures, society or societies, and geographical area associated with this civilization."
      But the sentence's length problem is exacerbated.--Keerllston 11:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Is there an academic source to verify this claim? Academic sources seem not to include "the countries, nation or nations, ethnicity or ethnicities, culture or cultures, society or societies, and geographical area associated with this civilization" in the definition of "China". And bringing up "nation" and "ethnicity" here is rather anachronistic.
We might as well say "China is the world (as many in premodern Asia knew it)"--Jiang (talk) 09:20, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Jiang. Not sure what is "associated" with this civilisation, but if Japan is regarded as "associated" with Chinese civilisation, I think we have a problem. "Sinitic civilisation" might conceivably include Japan. "Chinese civilisation" might but is quite dubious. However, it's very hard to see how you would include Japan in an article about "China"!
Bathrobe (talk) 12:44, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
let me explain: since "China" is to some extent a culture and since the culture of japan is to some extent the culture of China, then to some extent "Japan" is to some extent a part of "China" - also therefore in terms of the geographical area, and also therefore in other ways. In fact Korea and Hong Kong and Taiwan were controlled by Japan for a long time and their culture also was transmitted.--Keerllston 15:11, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Kirlston, I think you should get your facts straight before you spin off grand theories of civilisation. Japan controlled Korea and Taiwan in the first half of the 20th century. It controlled HK during WWII, that's all. I'm not sure why Japan's control of these places should be considered to contribute to their status as part of China.
Bathrobe (talk) 02:20, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree - (I believe) "China is a civilization" is verified by various sources, although that precise usage is odd. "China has been across the ages a civilization in Asia" is more in keeping with the usage.
That "Tibet is a part of china" and that "[it] is not" is verifiable.
That "Japan is a part of china" and that "[it] is not" is perhaps not verifiable.
That "Taiwan is a part of china" and that "[it] is not" are verifiable.
That "Manchus are not chinese" and that "[they] are not" seems verifiable.
--Keerllston 15:11, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
This whole thing (such as the claim, by extension, "Japan is part of China") smells of original research. This whole thing just proves that "civilization" and "culture" unlike "sovereign state" (in the modern context) very imprecise entities, used as a matter of convenience rather than a reflection of realities. My point all along: China means different things in different contexts. It's almost impossible to assign a definition.--Jiang (talk) 00:38, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I believe 9 now does, very fittingly without appearing to derive from original research - please tell me what you think of it.
China means different things in different contexts -I note the significant difference between fine china and china the civilization -However I do not perceive a very big difference between PRC and Mainland China and "China on both sides of the strait" and "China proper" and "Zhonghua minzu" and "Han Chinese"
--Keerllston 12:01, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Proposal Support Withdrawn in preference to 9.--Keerllston 11:43, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal #9:China has been a civilization in Asia, the corresponding geographical area, and the corresponding nation or nations.

[Proposal Support Withdrawn in preference to #10--Keerllston 12:58, 4 December 2007 (UTC)]Support as Nominator--Keerllston 00:09, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Is the PRC a nation-state or a multinational state? I believe others consider themselves multi-ethnic nations, not multinational nations
  • An objection that seems plausible to me was that it was in the wrong order - and made it look as though it was the nations corresponding to the area and not to the civilization - I believe here the issue is one of ambivalence, rather than ambiguity though.--Keerllston 11:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

This one sounds like legalese. It says a lot while saying nothing at all. It basically goes back to "China is a civilization".

What is the geographical area? Someone could summarize this in another sentence in the leade, of how the precise area of Chinese civilization expanded out of the Yellow River plain, up to the present borders of the PRC. China is a place, not a "geographical area", whatever that means.

How does a nation correspond with a civilization? You can't have a civilization in 100 years, nor can you have a nation in 3000. Once again, to bring in "nation" or nationhood into this is to invite anachronism. Communist multi-nationality theory is not NPOV. If there is dispute, we leave it out of the one liner definition. --Jiang 21:37, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I think logic goes against "it says a lot [and] nothing"
Usage of "china is a civilization" was the main problem of 4 -as I understand - I think "has been" instead of "is" has solved this.
As to anachronism - I think I know what you mean, but I don't agree.
"China is a place" - as I understand it "geographical area" and "place" are synonimous, but one is both more encyclopedic and precise.
"up to the present borders of the PRC" that seems to agree with PRC's definition of China. What about "Outer Mongolia" - "Taiwan" - isn't that part of Chinese Civilization by your argument and not within PRC limits?
"Communist multi-nationality theory" - it exists? please link! I had imagined that the use of multinatinality was related to Soviet Russia.
"If there is dispute, we leave it out of the one liner definition" why? Is it your opinion that NPOV should only be treated in footnotes?
--Keerllston 23:10, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Legalese consists of three pages excessive language such as "person and persons, group and groups" accounting for every possible inflection of the English language to say something simple like "If you don't sue me, I won't sue you." In the same way, this proposal seeks to beat around the bush of controversy by listing different variations of the concept of "China". This is not NPOV. NPOV means "X believes F is Q, while Y believes F is R", not "F is Q and R".

"China has been a civilization" is ungrammatical. "China was a civilization" or "China is a civilization". "Civilization" is a characterization for a proper noun is not an action that happened at in the unspecified past, so you cannot use present perfect tense with it.

Geographical area and place are not synonymous. Geographical area implies a specific area enclosed by clear geographical features while place is conceptually less restricted. Since borders are fluid, we cannot define China by geography alone.

I am not asking to define the PRC as the extent of Chinese civilization. In fact, it is impossible to assign borders to Chinese civilization. I am only using the PRC as part of the definition of the "geographical area".

See Ethnic minorities in China. The CCP copied the CPSU in adopting nationality theory. Please elaborate on why you think this is not anachronistic.--Jiang 06:49, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

on grammar and anachronism:"was" is past tense, "is" is present tense, "has been" is another tense, is there a better way to phrase the fact that it has been not only in one time but in many? I believe nation is used to refer to the past even if the word did not exist back then, just like civilization is used even if the people did not call themselves a civilization.--Keerllston 19:55, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Jiang. This whole shemozzle is simply the result of an attempt to skirt around the intractable issue of PRC vs ROC. But bringing civilisation into it doesn't resolve the issue at all. If anything the problem more difficult (witness Kirlston's abortive attempt above to rope Japan, Korea, and Vietnam into the article). I think we should get back to "country". No matter how difficult that may appear, we at least have only two variables to deal with. The fact that the PRC and the ROC can't agree on each other's status is a political issue and shouldn't stop us from dealing with it sensibly. Going off on a civilisation tangent is really going the long way round.
Bathrobe 01:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
"has been" is present perfect tense, meaning it happened in the past, but in the unspecified past. I'm not sure how "it has been not only in one time but in many" is an accurate to classify a civilization. A civilization tends to imply the existence of a cultural and political entity over a long, continuous, period of time. It does not mean it's Halley's Comet and shows up every 75 years. Given that China still exists, we would have to say "China is a civilization" though this does not seem to be the prevailing impression people get upon hearing the word.
There is a large body of academic literature that I could perhaps cite to show that "nationality theory", as applied to China, is a well debated and controversial issue. I have seen no such use of the word by Western historians to refer to premodern China. Nation, unlike civilization, implies self-identification with an imagined community of people on perceived similaries in language and customs. Using the term on people who has no such conception is making a political statement.--Jiang 02:58, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
I try to "rope in" Japan, Korea, and Siberia? Interesting. I think #10 is much better than #9 now, still does not solve issues of whether mongolia/korea/etc are part of China or not - but it is definitely the most NPOV so far.--Keerllston 01:33, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 10: is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and an national or multinational entity in East Asia.

Support -Currently in the article. Fixes usage problems, notes nationality and multinationality. Minor problem is ambiguity about whether Nation refers to a State or to an Ethnicity.--Keerllston 01:30, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I like this one better than the others, but I think the word "entity" should be replaced with something more definite, ie, "national or multinational state" or "national or multinational country". I would also move "cultural region" behind civlization.--Jiang 20:55, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that the cultural region, the ancient civilization, and the national or multinational entity each deserve their own page. Trying to discuss them all at once in any detail isn't possible while maintaining NPOV. Readin (talk) 20:14, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

They're not mutually exclusive, so I don't see the need to split them. You can use the term China to refer to all of them at the same time. For example, the primary food staple in China is rice. Where space is an issue, we use Wikipedia:Summary style. Keep the general article topical while leaving details for daughter articles.--Jiang (talk) 20:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Rename Proposals

Proposal 11: Rename this page to "Chinese Civilization. For now, searching for "China" will bring a user to this page.

The incumbent position is that this page talks about Chinese Civilization. One of the problems we keep running into is people want to change the introductory sentence because they object to implications that "China" is just a civilization and nothing more. If the article were named "Chinese Civilization", the focus of the article would be clear. The next step would be to decide where the "China" search should send a user, and whether or not there is a need for a "China" page which is distinct from all the articles that already exist. Readin (talk) 19:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC) Support Readin (talk) 19:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

As I have stated before, we have a gazillion links coming here and a good number are not limited to "Chinese civilization" and nor are they PRC specific. This would require a bunch of pipelinking for little gain. When people write of Han China, they dont call it "Han Chinese civilization". Rome is compared to China, not "Chinese civilization".
What's wrong the proposal above?--Jiang (talk) 20:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
And yet when you do a link to Rome you get the modern city, not the ancient civilization. Yet it is the ancient civilization of Rome, not the city of Rome, that is compared to China. That is why at the top of the Rome article is there is a link to a Rome (disambiguation) page. It's congruent with Wiki practices to have pick one of the definitions of a word to link to, and then have a disambiguation page. Once we achieve that, we can then discuss whether we are linking to the right page. Readin (talk) 20:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Ancient Rome and the city of Rome are quite mutually exclusive. Unfortunately (or fortunately) China is still in existence and is much larger than a single city so our options aren't mutually exclusive. In any case, there should be some content at China specifically, isntead of having this page moved to "Chinese civilization" and all current links to this page pipelinked.--Jiang (talk) 22:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

They're not totally mutually exclusive. The Coliseum is part of both. The modern language is a descendant of the ancient language (I believe the same is true with China). Like China, Rome went through some tough times and didn't alway maintain control over it's surroundings. But Rome is still a capital, but of a smaller region. Just because Rome contracted while the Chinese Empire kept expanding doesn't mean that the Chinese Empire didn't have it's hiccups too. And surely you can't argue that The People's Republic of China and the Qin Empire are one and the same. "China" has many meanings. Readin (talk) 00:00, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
It is clear from context on whether we are referring to ruins that serve as a tourist destination or a working ampitheater for gladiatorial contests. There is no political entity called Rome (except for the municipal government) and the culture has been superseded by others (ie Italian). I really don't see how reference to the term could mean both civilization and city. Do you have a specific example?--Jiang (talk) 01:01, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I like that there is now an attempt to deal with this properly.--Keerllston 01:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Oppose the original country name before 1911 is China. Benjwong (talk) 17:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Oppose in favor of Proposal 12 and 12a as "Civilization" as those are proper attempts to properly define China.--Keerllston 18:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 12: Rename this page to "Chinese Civilization. Replace this page with "China is a country..."

"China is a country in East Asia. It is associated with one of the world's oldest continuous civlisations [...] [the following deals with the political situation] Internationally, the People's Republic of China is usually identified as the state representing China; some countries, however, instead recognise the Republic of China as representing China. [...] [the following deals with territorial disputes and secessionist claims] What territories comprise China is a matter of frequent debate. Strong movements in Taiwan advocate either that Taiwan establishes itself as separate from China, or that Taiwan is already separate from China. Other movements advocate for the independence from China of Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. At the same time, various groups, including, officially, the Republic of China government, advocate for recidivist claims to parts of Burma, Russia, the whole of Mongolia, [etc]."

Breaking out of the "let's define China" conundrum by going for the most common and unambiguous meaning of "China", while leaving room for all sorts of interpretations linked to from the lead paragraph. Thoughts welcome. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:57, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Rather than moving the article and creating a stub, the above sentences would be a very appropriate opening for the article as it currently exists, and would be a good basis for replacing the current lead. There's no need to rename this article: the body of the article is about "China" as commonly understood. Unfortunately the current lead confuses readers by claiming the article is just about the civilization. I would change "Internationally" to "Currently", and move the bit about territories down to the History or Territory sections. Kanguole (talk) 09:52, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Change to "China is a region in East Asia.The use of the term "country" is a bit confusing. The primary definitions for country] are an indefinite usually extended expanse of land : region and a: the land of a person's birth, residence, or citizenship b: a political state or nation or its territory. Since you make distinction of saying the PRC is the state, the first definition of "country" must be intended. For clarity we should change it to the more precise term "region".
If we go with this proposal, how do we draw boundaries on the region? For most proposals we'll have more work to do to clarify boundaries and what to include or omit, but in this case it's not clear to me where we even start. It's more than just the map. Do we include a section on the Himalayas? Do we talk about the popularity of baseball in Taiwan (as the current article does)? In the history section, do we include Manchuria in 1500 AD? Canton in 400 BC? Xinjiang during the Qin dynasty? In an article about the PRC, I can answer those questions. In an article about the civilization, I can make and listen to reasonable arguments. But with "China is a region (country)", I have no idea where to begin figuring out what lands are included in the region.
Finally, the most common meaning of "China" is the PRC.
Oppose It doesn't help us reach NPOV or clarify what the article is about. Readin (talk) 16:36, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
But that's my point - you don't go figuring out what lands are in "China", because there are so many different perspectives on it.
You define China the country, then you talk about the different perspectives on what is in or out of that country. And a "country" is not the same as a "region". Ask any man on the street (or the Clapham omnibus) "what is China", and I bet 9 times out of 10 they'll say "it's a country".
The way I see it, there are 4 ways out of this conundrum:
1. Decide that we don't really need a "China" (as opposed to Chinese civilisation) article afterall, and just leave China as talking about Chinese civilisation or redirect China to Chinese civilisation.
2. Decide that we don't really need a "China" article afterall, and redirect China to People's Republic of China, with a disambiguating note directed to Republic of China.
3. Make China an article about the country, and treat PRC and ROC as competing governments of that country, and daughter articles of the main China article.
4. Give up, make China a disambiguation page, everyone goes home. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Ask any man on the street (or the Clapham omnibus) "what is China", and I bet 9 times out of 10 they'll say "it's a country". And if you ask them for details about that country (what is the formal name, how is it governed, etc.) it will become immediately clear that the "country" they mean is what you call a "state", the PRC. So why not simply say "China is the country formally known as the People's Republic of China"?
Of your four suggestions, I support #1 if we rename this article "Chinese Civlization" so that there will be no more confusion as to what this article is about. I also support #2; I think it is the best solution. I oppose #3 strongly because it is confusing and very prone to supporting the "Taiwan is part of China" POV. I also support #4.
You've suggested 4 things, and I support 3. That means you and I have common agreement on 3 proposals. If Jiang, Kirlston, and Bathrobe (I hope I didn't leave any regular contributors out) can each agree to support 2 of those three suggestions, or at least rank the suggestions in terms of preference, we have an excellent chance of reaching a consensus.Readin (talk) 19:27, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I like it a lot...
I am uncomfortable with "Country" being used - as I understand it's current usage - for vagueness.
I like it a lot -Support.
--Keerllston 01:02, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
Further issue(s)
-what about Andrukah Pradesh? - 'what regions comprise a part of china is in frequent debate' - and then no talk of Andrukah Pradesh??
I think the "recivindist" (I have no idea what that means) - claims of ROC were a good way to bring up the expanded version of China - but it isn't just by their consideration/claims that it's considered a part of china...
--Keerllston 11:05, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

A better question to ask: What, specifically, is wrong with the current article? I'm don't see the point making these drastic, unhelpful changes (ie having to pipelink or relink every single article that links here now) when we don't have that much of a problem to solve. We can't simply rename this page to solve "confusion" when the specificity we are creating does not exist in the context of real world usage of the term and the many links headed to this page. I don't see the merit of stubbing this page, or creating a civilization page, unless we can fill it with content. Why not create some draft proposals first? /Chinese civilization /China (draft) etc?--Jiang (talk) 01:08, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

An excellent question. The main thing wrong with it is that the italicized disclaimer and the first two paragraphs claim that the article is about the civilization, when an examination of the body reveals that it is about "China" as commonly understood: a country in East Asia, currently the PRC but with a long history before then. The article discusses the geography, climate, history, demography and culture of this place, precisely the topics that you'd expect to find in a book called "China" in any English-language bookstore or library. I think PalaceGuard's text above would be a fine starting point for a more appropriate lead for this article, but the article itself fills the "China" slot well. Kanguole (talk) 11:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
The current article lacks any proper definition of China--Keerllston 11:22, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Suggested additions/changes: China is a word used to refer to a nation/country/territory/region/people and two governments that carry it's name, it has in various parts received external influences - Hong Kong was considered a part of ___ until ___ years ago. Macau was considered a part of ___ and had been for ___ before ___, Taiwan was conquered by ___, has it's own ___ people, and is where the leadership of the ROC migrated to during the Civil War.--Keerllston 11:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, if the word "China" is going to be used so generically, and we are striving for accuracy in both current and historical meaning, perhaps "empire" is the proper term. Throughout most of China's history, the leader has been an "emperor" rather than a "king". And unlike other empires, it hasn't shrunken appreciably since. It still consists of people who are considered more Chinese and people of other ethnic groups.
Some suggestions seem to be wanting to use "country" in the sense that France is a "country" by being a nation that is mostly culturally homogenous (or was until very recent times) covering a region that has remained mostly static for a very long time. However, this description doesn't fit "China", which a big reason why the question of what to include in China is so contentious. What has made it more confusing is the PRC's attempts to make China fit that same "country" mold and to attempt to also include Taiwan as part of that "country" in order to strengthen PRC's claims to Taiwan.
Of course I fully expect to be accused of injecting my own POV, but I doubt I'll any difficulty finding reliable sources to show China has been an empire, and even to show that some scholars still believe it is. The PRC may say it is not, but on this question the PRC is hardly a reliable source.
All this gets back to my objection to making the article about China the "country". By doing so it is still unclear what is being talked about. What definition of "country" are we referring to? Is that definition correct for "China"? Is it the definition most people have in mind when they think of "China".
Kanguole is right that the current article is a mess. We need to change it soon. Dwarf Kirlston and I have both supported a number of proposals, and I think Palaceguard had four suggestions he would support. It would be nice if some others would support multiple proposals. If people only support their very favorite and are unwilling to compromise on a second-choice, we'll never get anywhere. Readin (talk) 02:58, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 12a: Create page "Chinese Civilization" instead of rename- otherwise equal to proposal 12

Support if"renaming" is a problem then why rename at all?--Keerllston 10:51, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 13: Searching for "China" redirects user to PRC page. Current article is renamed to "Chinese Civilization"

  • Oppose per opposition to Proposal 3
  • Support

Kirlston wrote: This page is similar to the pages on Ireland and Korea where there has been a division - the two sides of a conflict over the direction of the country - which still continues today.
ROC and PROC are the ones of this conflict.

However, China is very different from either of those. First, unlike Ireland, China as a geographic region is not an island. It does not have the well-defined boundaries of an island. Unlike Ireland, there are disputes about who lives China the geographic region and who doesn't. These aren't minor disputes over a few hundred square miles pushing a border a little to the left or to the right. These are disputes involving millions of people, and land areas larger than most nations.
China is not like Korea. China is not a peninsula Korea, like Ireland, has a pretty well defined area. Neither government controls large areas that are not ethnically Korea. Neither government is based in an area it did not start with. And Neither government governs a people the majority of whom were forced to learn a new language when the government took over.
ROC and PROC are the ones of this conflict. They are not the only ones. You're missing the Taiwan POV. To you it may be two brothers fighting over the family fortune. To many Taiwanese it is two thieves arguing over who "rightfully" owns the stolen property. You also miss the many Tibetans who see it as one thief who has broken in and decided to stay. Readin (talk) 18:05, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
hmmm... so we clearly have some part to which we agree... I am not sure what you're saying exactly...
I object because PRC is not China - per numerous reasons probably elucidated in many previous arguments and following the previous consensus that created this article as separate from PRC and PROC...
you seem to agree to some extent - "These aren't minor disputes over a few hundred miles pushing a border a little to the left or a little to the right. These are disputes involving millions of people, and land areas larger than most [state's territories]"
China is not like Korea? I did not know before but I learnt that there are parts of "Korea" that are part of the PRC- or at least Korean speaking parts of the PRC...
I think the difference between China proper (excludes Manchuria!) and Zhongua minzu (includes Mongolia, Korea, American Chinese) and PRC (excludes Taiwan?) are enough encouragement to not have China lead to PRC.
--Keerllston 14:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Meta-Discussion

Rather than staying organized, this discussion seemed to be degenerating. I hope no one minds if I move their comments around a bit to put them under logical groupings. Please try to put comments on each proposal under the proposal you're commenting on. Jiang, I'm opening up a two new proposals to reflect the two views you seem to support. You can modify the exact wording if you like. It would also be nice if you added some text to the proposal listings to explain the proposals.Readin Readin (talk) 15:07, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure which one I favour. However, I feel more and more that "civilisation" is the wrong way to go. Personally, I feel that the Taiwan issue is just one part of the wider issue of China's perceptions of territory and sovereignty, and the way this has been ideologically projected onto history. The tensions over Tibet, Mongolia, Korea etc. are part of this.

Is it impossible to write a simple article like History_of_the_United_Kingdom for China? That article freely notes the territorial accretions of the UK and how it "used to" include the whole of Ireland but doesn't any more. Why is it that statements like "China used to include all of outer Mongolia but doesn't any more" present such difficulties in a Chinese context? Bathrobe (talk) 03:19, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe the United Kingdom is very different than China. Population wise is the most impressive. But the question of saying that the Scottish are English is very politically incorrect.
The problem is that whether China refers to - China proper and/or Han Chinese - or - to a greater china referred to by the term Zhonghua minzu is the question.
We don't say the Soviet Union was "Soviet Russia" - Why not?
Have I made the difference between the United Kingdom and China perceivable?
--Keerllston 04:37, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't think size (population) is a valid criterion for rejecting treatment along the lines of the United Kingdom.
Of course saying the Scots are English is politically incorrect. But I used the term "UK", not "England".
The term "Soviet Russia" was very commonly used at one stage, so that point is invalid. Besides, Russia claims that it is the legal successor state to the Soviet Union, which implicitly recognises that "Soviet Union" = "Russia".
The main political problem standing in the way of a nice tidy article about China is Taiwan. Without Taiwan, everything falls into place reasonably well.
What I'm saying is that "Chinese civilisation" casts the net too wide. We really should concentrate on the country.
Bathrobe (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 05:44, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
How about saying that the people from Puerto Rico are part of the United States - or that the Philippines were - you would not say that this is a POV?
The importance of the difference between English and Chinese is that Chinese refers to both a smaller group (Han Chinese/China proper/Mainland/Non-Tibet/Non-Mongolia/Non-Hong Kong/Non-Macau/etc) and a larger group (Zhonghua minzu/greater china/Tibet/Mongolia/American Born Chinese/Korea/Andra Pradesh/etc.) and the same term applies to both - "United Kingdomese" or "British" - vs. "English" vs "Chinese" vs. "Chinese" the confusion of the term British is similar to that of the term Chinese- but even more so the term "Normandy" - which as I (mis?)understand pretty much means "Men of the North" and includes Sweden, England, Ireland, Denmark, etcetera as well as Normandie - a province/state/region of france.
Also did you know that Soviet Russia currently redirects to Russian SFSR and not to USSR or to it's disambiguation page?--Keerllston 15:16, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Norsemen refers to the men of the north. Normandy is a region of France. The redirect from Soviet Russia to Russian SFSR seems rather strange to me. And the history is one of reverts between you and Mikhail.
Bathrobe (talk) 02:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
"Soviet Russia" - it seemed rather strange to me as well that it led to RSFSR, as a result of that I tried to change that, I think I have learnt from that experience. I also engaged in the wrongminded refactoring of the Russia talk page, I think I've learnt not refactor to that scale. I have also commented on Russia's FAC with a vote of "strongly oppose".
The Russian Empire included Ukraine and Poland - and the current Russia does not. Does "Russia" include "Ukraine"? I think some Russians and Ukrainians believe this many do not.
Normandy - the duchy of Normandy included Britain. Normans notes that the use of Norman is in Russian and French historiography confused with that of "Northmen" or Vikings.
"Norse, Norsemen, and Normans are all applied to the Scandinavian population of the period from the late 8th century to the 11th century." from Norsemen
I hope this serves to clarify some things.
--Keerllston 15:36, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
As to what I learned from the Soviet Russia - it makes little sense to seek consensus between two people - especially where the other side does not understand your point of view as a valid one. Quagliu, for example, did not try to understand why things were as they were.--Keerllston 00:17, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


I think the conclusion is very clear: China is a country, otherwise this page will violate Wikipeidia naming convention. --Quagliu (talk) 03:38, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the conclusion is not yet very clear, please be calm and do not hurry, and do not disrupt this page.--Keerllston 12:23, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I think we are making some progress. It seems no one really likes #4 (current consensus) as is. I'm starting to warm to your #7, provided there are some clarifications associated with it, which I'll try to write up if I can make time later today. Readin (talk) 14:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree, I think we are making progress, and "China is a civilization" has a general opposition against it. Let's be calm and not hurry, let's be civil to each other, let's be constructive and work together. Doing that I am sure we can take this article to GA and beyond.--Keerllston 15:16, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Zhongguo translation and section NPOV tag

Currently way too much emphasis is given in the section on the 'correctness' of "Central Kingdom" or "Central Country" over the "Middle Kingdom." It's absolutely NPOV. Particularly baffling is why "Middle Kingdom" isn't bolded, given the fact that most English language articles use the term "Middle Kingdom" over the other hackneyed alternatives provided by "renowned scholars." --Naus (talk) 02:20, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

While Wikipedia seeks to be scholarly, it also seeks a consensus in using commonly accepted terms. By a large margin, the common literal translation of Zhongguo in the English language and among English native speakers is "Middle Kingdom." It is pointless to argue what is more "linguistically correct." It is even more pointless to dig out and display the quotations of a few dissenting China scholars on this, when far more examples can be found using and supporting for "Middle Kingdom" (both in popular literature and academic text) --Naus (talk) 02:27, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Agree. However, I have always been rather mystified by the hackneyed use of "Middle Kingdom" as a translation when "Central Country" is obviously more correct. Couldn't we just say that: "Zhongguo is commonly translated as "Middle Kingdom", although "Central Country" is perhaps a more accurate translation".
We don't need quotations to back this up, just providing sources will do. By the way, I don't consider Boye De Mente a "renowned Sinologist" by any stretch of the imagination.
Bathrobe (talk) 02:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
The thing is, it's even arguable that "Central Country" is even "obviously [more] correct." The problem is that "Central Country" translated back into Chinese becomes 中央国家 (Zhongyang Guojia), and that makes no sense. The brilliance of "Middle Kingdom" is that it captures the nominative (proper name) nature of "Zhongguo" in the original Chinese and allows room for interpretation, much like the original Chinese "Zhongguo" does. When you use "Central Country", you lose that appellative connotation (you become descriptive instead, and it's a horrible description in the first place). I don't think we need to have a lengthy discussion of this in the China article. Keep it to the Names of China article. --Naus (talk) 02:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I've made the reversions. --Naus (talk) 02:39, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Don't totally agree. What is the back translation of "Middle Kingdom"? 中间王国?
Bathrobe (talk) 02:46, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Haha, the point is that "Central Country" is a very descriptive construction in English, while "Middle Kingdom" is too awkward to be a descriptive clause in English. "Middle Kingdom" like "Middle-earth" is easily appellative, while "Central Country" is rather difficult to adapt as a proper noun. This is equivalent to the American English usage of Midwest instead of Midwestern Region, or East Asia instead of Eastern Asia. The UN can try as hard as it wants to call East Asia "Eastern Asia," but people still use East Asia more and the Wikipedia entry is East Asia too. --Naus (talk) 02:55, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
"Central Country" or "Central Kingdom" becomes a phrase, while "Middle Kingdom" remains a singular appellation, as it is in the original Chinese. --Naus (talk) 03:05, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
How about Central African Republic (République Centrafricaine)?
Bathrobe (talk) 04:26, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Still, I agree it's not a major issue worth being brought up on this page.
Bathrobe (talk) 02:49, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 中 zhong means "middle" first, "central" second. 中学 zhongxue = middle school, not "central school." In China, the first Chinese characters taught in first grade are 上中下 (shang, zhong, xia: "up", "middle", "down"). --Naus (talk) 03:10, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
  • When Confucius wrote aboute 中 zhong (as in 中庸 zhongyong), he meant The Middle Way or Moderation; not the "Central Way." Those who suggest zhong to be translated as "Central" really have not a real clue in Sinology besides the superficial. --Naus (talk) 03:16, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
  • The idea that Zhongguo refers to a position in China (i.e., "in the center") is blasphemous and revisionist. Ever wonder why there's no "Beiguo" 北国 or "Dongguo" 东国? Because the zhong in "Zhongguo" never was referring to a position! In Yijing (I Ching, the oldest classical Chinese text) and the later Confucian writings, the use of zhong represented "governance", "middle way", and "moderation." Confucius repeatedly focused on two words: 中 zhong and 礼 li (ritual). The Chinese name Zhongguo is a very culturally appropriate name for China, but not in the sense of "Central Country." --Naus (talk) 03:38, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
This is from the page on Zhongyuan, unfortunately unsourced! But is it incorrect?
Inscriptions on some bronze objects from this era contain references to the 'Central States' (Zhongguo), 'Eastern States', or 'Southern States'. This indicates that the Central Plain, which was referred as the 'Central States' in these inscriptions, was considered to occupy the center of the world.
Bathrobe (talk) 06:18, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I am not an expert in Classical Chinese. I am just sceptical about the proposition that Chinese 中 is an exact semantic match for English 'middle'. I'm also trying to think what the Classical Chinese word for 'central' might have been. Does Confucius give us a clue about that?
What is the term used in the theory of 五行 (south, north, east, west, centre)?
Bathrobe (talk) 04:19, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
This is really bull shit! Just for you ggg (talk) 03:47, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Someone ban this sockpuppet tool. --Naus (talk) 03:55, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
五行 is essentially 5 cardinal points. I definitely wouldn't say that is a popular explanation for the word 中. The Qin dynasty's "centralized guo (中國)" is the one most widely accepted in historical explanations. Having come out of the Seven Warring States with every single one of the states ending in 國. So it makes sense that 中國 is the centralized sum of all the small states. Equally interesting is that Qin is a fairly central point on the map. There is like 50 ways in intrepret how 中 came about, let alone the English "central" or "middle". Benjwong (talk) 04:59, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
How about 中原? I only suggested the 五行 because people were harking back to Classical Chinese, and the 中 in the 五行 seems more 'central' than 'middle' to me.
Bathrobe (talk) 06:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
"Central" and "Middle" are synonyms in English anyway. I've modified the sentence to reflect the opinion that "Central" is more accurate.
And someone please ban these sockpuppets! --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:35, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Term "China"

This is not about the term Zhongguo and rather about the Term China that has an interesting history of its own. - I'm not saying that the talk of "Zhonghuo" Etymology should be deleted or even that it should be trimmed, it seems to me that the main topic should be "China" and not "Czongguo" --Keerllston 12:40, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Errr, what exactly do you mean by "czong"? I'm not totally sure about the term "China", but it's an interesting research topic for you if you're interested. For now, I suppose we're looking at the origins of favored translations of "zhong guo". IceUnshattered (talk) 01:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

2 political states?

HELLO, the following line will be removed soon since it's misleading:

there are currently two political states that formally use the name China

2 political states? As far as I know, both CPC & ROC consider the same land as China, and China is a country, and this country has 2 political parties, not states. --Quagliu (talk) 03:48, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Please stop threatening to disrupt the page.--Keerllston 03:51, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Please concentrate on the context and follow Wikipedia policies, also argue with reasons --Quagliu (talk) 03:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Please provide sources for your proposed edit. Also, please don't go in and edit until you have some kind of consensus among editors.
I suggest that "2 political entities" may be better than "2 political states". "2 political parties" doesn't make sense since Taiwan, at least, has the possibility of changing the ruling party. That would mean that China has "3 political parties", which is manifestly wrong -- and I can provide sources.
Bathrobe (talk) 05:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Two political "entities", "regimes", or "bodies" are better than "state", because "state" has a particular meaning at international law, and there are plenty of reliable sources to contradict the view that China consists of "two states" - these sources being official PRC and ROC statements, UN resolutions, treaties, and international law commentary. It's more NPOV to use a word like "entity". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Calling a government a "regime" or a "body" seems to diminish it's standing. - POV-ishly. Same for the others - they seem to qualify the type of government. Could you quote uses of "political entity" or "political regime"?
it seems to me that, Since the UN has to act per the veto of the PRC to some extent, then the UN is to some extent a political extension of the PRC/PROC: if so then the UN is to some extent a vehicle for the PRC's opinion on ROC/Taiwan and its political acceptance or otherwise is per the definition of the PRC and is therefore not NPOV if the PRC is not NPOV.--Keerllston 12:04, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Not sure what you mean. Are you questioning the use of "political entity" as applied to Taiwan? Or the existence of the English term "political entity"? If it's the latter, I'm not sure what your grounds are. Try a Google, check out some dictionaries; the term exist, with a suitably vague (but not "spiritual") meaning. :)
Bathrobe (talk) 01:26, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Dwarf Kirlston that the UN does not represent NPOV. However, given that both political whatevers involved have in the recent past agreed that there is only one 'state' (it is not clear that Taiwan still agrees with that), and given the overwhelming diplomatic (but again diplomats are not NPOV) agreement that there is only one 'state', 'entity' is probably closer to NPOV even if it is less clear to someone new to the situation. Perhaps 'political entities acting as states' would be clearer. Readin (talk) 20:56, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

PRC is NPOV?

Is the People's Republic of China Neutral in it's Point of View?--Keerllston 12:10, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

You guys, I think there is some confusion about what NPOV stands for.

NPOV does not stand for "neutrality" in the abstract sense. Defining and aiming for "neutrality" in the abstract is WP:OR. When you dismiss the UN as being "non-NPOV", what you are really saying is that it is "non-neutral". That's not what the NPOV policy is about.

The NPOV policy is about giving fair representation to all significant points of view. In this regard, it should be read in conjunction with the RS policy: basically, we have to represent all significant points of view that are represented by reliable sources. Not all reliable sources are neutral - most reliable sources are biased in some way. Wikipedia's NPOV policy is not about selecting neutral sources. It is about balancing the various points of view of these reliable sources, by, for example, setting one opinion against another.

For example, let's say we have a paper by the American Cola Drinks Foundation that says "Coca Cola is the best cola drink!". Let's say Coca Cola is represented on the board of the Foundation but Pepsi is not. Let's say Pepsi publishes its own report which conludes "Pepesi cola is way better than Coca Cola". How would Wikipedia treat this? Assuming that the point is notable, we wouldn't dismiss both sources just because they are "tainted by bias". Instead, we would present both points of view, backed up by their respective sources. Without clear evidence to the contrary, it is WP:OR to conclude that either report is unreliable simply because they take a particular point of view. In the present case, it is dangerous to conclude that "the UN is not reliable" just because it tends to favour the PRC's point of view. Afterall, the UN represents the collective opinion and practice of almost all indisputably sovereign nations of the world, and UN resolutions and other representations are considered persuasive evidence of international law.

Here, in terms of characterising the PRC and the ROC, let us consider what are the reliable sources available to us.

1. When you are trying to characterise a group of persons or an entity composed of people, reliable sources as to its self-characterisation is clearly significant. Thus, that official sources of the PRC and the ROC each represent themselves as "the State", while denying the existence of the other, represnt two significant points of view. These points of view are that (a) "China consists of one state, that state being the ROC, although signifcant parts of this one state is in control by a renegade regime (the PRC) which is not a state", and (b) "China consists of one state, that state being the PRC, although one part of this one state is in control by the remnant of a displaced reimge (the ROC) which ceased to be a state after 1949".

2. Like with any question of classification, the opinions of experts in the field are relevant. Here, the question of statehood and recognition of statehood is a question of public international law. Reliable sources for the interpretation of international law include treaty law, state practice, UN resolutions, and academic commentary. The vast majority of these sources of international law subscribe to view 1(b) identified above, although a significant minority of these sources subscribe to view 1(a) identified above.

3. Other significant points of view that we should have regard to include: (a) the viewpoint of various independence movements that China is a state but that state does not include Tibet and/or Inner Mongolia and/or Xinjiang and/or Taiwan. (b) the viewpoint of some sections of Pan-Green supporters, including pseudo-official statements by the current Taiwanese government, that there already are two separate States, being the PRC and the ROC.

As you can see, the "two states" theory is only one of a variety of points of view. It is dangerous to adopt any one of these points of view, especially one that finds no sympathy with the international community in the sense of government practice. It is dangerous, not because it is non-neutral: it probably is quite a neutral view; It is dangerous because it represents OR and violates NPOV: NPOV requires representation of all significant points of view; it does not require the selection of one point of view, judged to be "neutral" (which is a value judgment and OR), and discarding the rest.

My opinion is that, according to general statements of international law, the PRC is recognised as having replaced the ROC under the succession of states theory and succeeded to the sovereignty of China, although both regimes remain in existence.

I have no objection to recognising the fact that the PRC and the ROC are two political entities that remain in existence - provided reliable sources can be found to state that. However, the word "state" has a particular meaning in international law, and to describe the PRC and the ROC as two states goes against the general interpretation of international law, and thus violates NPOV and the principle against undue weight. All points of view should be presented, and I think that for the lead, a general (and thus neutral) term like "two regimes" or "two governments" should suffice, with a more detailed discussion of the various interpretations further down.

(If anyone wants a source for the application of succession of states to China - I'm afraid I can't cite you a book right now because I am away from my law books. I can only assure you that that is the general consensus view of the law, and promise to supply a source as soon as practicable). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:38, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

The main problem with your description is here:
"2. Like with any question of classification, the opinions of experts in the field are relevant. Here, the question of statehood and recognition of statehood is a question of public international law. Reliable sources for the interpretation of international law include treaty law, state practice, UN resolutions, and academic commentary. The vast majority of these sources of international law subscribe to view 1(b) identified above, although a significant minority of these sources subscribe to view 1(a) identified above."
UN Resolutions, and even treaty law do not represent "the opinions of experts". Regarding Taiwan in particular, UN Resolutions and treaties generally represent the PRC view. That is Dwarf Kirlston's point, I believe. Regarding Taiwan, the UN should not be treated as an independent reliable source, but simply as an extension of the PRC as a source. Due to PRC pressure on other nations, the same can be said about the diplomatic statements of many countries. Rather than representing independent sources, they are simply reflections of the PRC as a source.
You also wrote "Afterall, the UN represents the collective opinion and practice of almost all indisputably sovereign nations of the world, and UN resolutions and other representations are considered persuasive evidence of international law." In fact, regarding Taiwan, it does not. As you point out, the UN treats Taiwan as part of China. But in practice, very few nations do. Most accept Taiwan's passports. Most make trade agreements with Taiwan independent of their agreements with China. They have offices that act as embassies to Taiwan. So again, the UN merely represents the PRC's view rather than representing anything else. The PRC's view should be represented, but it shouldn't be followed by representing the UN as an independent source. Would we balance an article on Iraq by giving equal time to all four views, those of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, and Osama Bin Ladin? No, because in this case Bush, Cheney, and Rove are not independent of each other as sources. Similarly, on issues regarding Taiwan, the PRC and UN are not independent sources. Together they only represent one source and cannot be used independently to try to lend credibility to each other. Readin (talk) 14:26, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I would add that saying the ROC is not a "state" under international law is not the same as saying Taiwan is not a state. International law is not the only POV. Other POVs, such as how other states choose make treaties and agreements with Taiwan independently of their agreements with China, how Taiwan is seen governs its territories, represent equally valid POVs.
Still, I'm fine with the use of "political entity" in place of "political state". Readin (talk) 15:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Agreement- Awesome comment! truly admirable.
The only question I have is what you meant by your point "1" - you start with china is people then you say that both points are that china is a state - a "state" is not people -a nation/ethnicity is people.
Support rename to governments as most NPOV and proper since: (.01) Regime sounds military and unpopular therefore POV. (.001) Entity sounds spiritual.
--Keerllston 15:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Support rename to governments. "government" works for me and is the term I often use. Readin (talk) 16:04, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I'm glad we agree about the usage of "state".
Keerllston: Thanks - I started talking about "people" because a state is made up of people, in the sense that it can possess a self-identity. By contrast, a horse or a chair (at least under "commonsense" wisdom) would not have a self-identity.
On the less relevant topic of the UN as a source of international law: I know many would see it as unfair, but international law is made by the international community, and Taiwan is excluded from participating in the international community, rightly or wrongly. As a result, the international law will inevitably seem to favour the PRC claim. That, however, does not make it any less a principle of international law.
About Sources of international law#State practice: most states consistently say either that the PRC is the only "state" representing China or that the ROC is the only "state" representing China. No country subscribes to the two-state theory at all, which, I think, is why most international law texts subscribe to the succession-of-states theory in relation to China. As far as I know, no state has ever made a treaty with "Taiwan", and no state has made treaties with both the PRC and the ROC simultaneously. Likewise, with only very few temporary exceptions such as Kiribati, no state has maintained diplomatic relations with both the PRC and the ROC simultaneously; nor has any state ever established diplomatic relations with "Taiwan". Yes, there is a view that "Taiwan" is a state, or that the ROC is a state separately from and concurrently with the PRC.
Anyway, that's all off-topic. I'll dig up some references on international law when I get back to my law books after the new year. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 20:30, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
So are you agreeing or disagreeing that the UN, "International Law", etc. do not constitute sources that are independent of China? If we are to provide balance, we shouldn't treat a single source as multiple independent voices. Saying in 1947 that "Stalin is not a dictator according to leaders of Russia (source:Stalin). Most scholars in Russia also say that Stalin is not a dictator. (source:scholarly papers in Russia)" would not be balance unless you pointed out that all the scholars who disagreed were killed and their papers burned. Similarly, it is not balance to cite the PRC's POV and then cite the UN and "international law" without pointing out that the PRC is the source of that POV through various forms of coercion. Further, we need to remember that UN and "international law" are only one POV and should not be given undue weight. I'm willing to live with "government" as an alternative to "state". But the fact that Taiwan isn't a "state" under "international law" doesn't mean that Taiwan isn't a state in reality. International law only provides one definition of "state", and that definition conflicts with the more common usages of the term. It is not uncommon for the "legal" definition of a word to conflict with what everyone knows the word means. Readin (talk) 21:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I disagree. You can't lump sources together based on some perceived link between them. If they hold the same opinions, yes feel free to lump them into the same "side" of an argument. That does not make them the same source, unless they are actually the same source.
To use your George Dubya and Dick Cheney argument: if Dubya says "Coke is cool" and Cheney then says "Mr President thinks Coke is cool", then these are the primary and secondary versions of the same source. But if Dubya says "Coke is cool" and Cheny also says "Coke is cool", then they are separate sources even if they say he same thing. They are assumed to be separate and independent unless you can prove that Cheney is incapable of independent reasoning or is merely parroting Bush.
The UN situation is an even stronger case. Yes, the UN's opinion on the Taiwan situation mirrors substantively that of the PRC. So does the official position of the rest of the world. It is one thing to talk about the possible influences of the PRC on those governments and the UN, it is quite another to assume that the UN is the mouthpiece of the PRC. Would you say that the UN is the mouthpiece of the Palestinian Liberation Movement simply because it sometimes criticises Israeli policy? Woiuld you say the UN is the mouthpiece of Australia simply because it takes the same position as to global whaling? You wouldn't.
As I have said several times before, the opinion of UN member states, as expressed through UN resolutions and other instruments, are important sources of international law, and are thus relevant to an analysis of the international law perspective on the UN situation. As I have said several times before, the UN is widely recognised as authoritative in this context, and this makes it a reliable source. It is quite WP:OR to dismiss such a reliable source simply on the basis of what you perceive as influence from one party rather than another. Specifically, when you talk about "coersion", it is original research on your part. You can't seriously be suggesting that a law professor in the UK or in the US is being "coerced" by the Chinese communist government.
The UN is made up of pretty much every country in the world. International law is stated by the world's pre-eminent jurists, on the basis of the practice and consensus of the world community. However strong the communists are, they don't rule the world, and without some solid evidence, it is a hard stretch to argue that they are managing to "coerce" every country in the world. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:08, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Coke is cool is not something George Bush has an interest in telling Dick Cheney. A better example would be a policy issue that Bush cares deeply about, but Cheney cares less about. The better example is the Stalin/Russian Scholars example. As for the UN and the PLA, I don't know that situation well enough to answer. Nor can I say I know the Australia/UN/Whaling example well. I do know the China/UN/Taiwan example, and it would be dishonest to not acknowledge that China dictates UN policy when it comes to Taiwan if you know enough about that situation. "It is one thing to talk about the possible influences of the PRC on those governments and the UN, it is quite another to assume that the UN is the mouthpiece of the PRC." There is no question of "possible" influence. The influence is well documented. It is both formal in that the PRC has veto power. And it is practiced as specific instances of the use of the influence are also well documented.
As for other countries, again the PRC practice of bribing them either with grants or with access to trade is well-known and well-documented. The US decision to de-recognize Taiwan was based on needing China as a balance against Russia, and this is also well-documented. To ignore how the PRC has gotten other countries to pay lip-service to its POV in exchange for military help, trade benefits, and monetary grants requires willful ignorance. Would these countries have come to the same conclusion without these bribes? It's hard to say. But when someone pays you to say something, and you say it, you are not providing another POV. You are, as you say, a spokesman for the that persons POV.
As for law professors in the US and UK, you would need to give me specific examples? If they simply parrot the UN because they believe the UN is a reliable source, then once again we're just getting the PRC POV.
I suppose the best example I could come up with would be to use President Hu the PRC Congress. Theoretically, PRC congress can oppose President Hu. In practice, they never do on any issue that Hu cares deeply about. Does the PRC congress provide an independent reliable source on the success of Hu's presidency? Readin (talk) 23:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
That last example is an apt analogy of your contention, but I think illustrates just how different the UN situation is. Firstly, powerful as China may be (or thinks it is, which is not the same thing), it does not dictate the positions of the United Nations. Without reliable sources, it is simply irrational to believe that the UN is China's mouthpiece, regardless of how much or how little it "cares" about certain things. The US, the most powerful nation in the world, has as much procedural power (I'm thinking of the veto) as China does in the UN, and plus has the economic might and "soft" influence as the patron and ally of many dozens of governments around the world, far more than China does or did even at the height of its "internationalist" phase. Yet even the US does not dictate what the UN says, and nobody would seriously suggest that the UN is the mouthpiece of the US on any issue. Your contention that China is somehow able to dictate to the UN seems like original research.
Again, the UN is a recognised source (in combination with other sources) of international law. You really need reliable sources if you are going to dismiss it. I know you feel quite strongly about the China-Taiwan issue, but speaking generally, any law, whether it be international or domestic, has influences of various kinds. Marxist and critical jurisprudence probably have a lot to say on that point. Nevertheless, that does not make the law any less of an authoritative and reliable source. Yes, we should take account of significant alternative interpretations to the official interpretation, but no, in the absence of some strong, well-sourced argument, we cannot just ignore authoritative and accepted interpretations of the law. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:11, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I recognize that you also feel quite strongly about the UN. I think I agreed with you that the UN is one recognized source of "international law" (though I still have trouble with the term "international law"). But, being a source of law does not make one a reliable source of fact. Since we're talking about China, we need look no further than our subject to see how being a source of law does not make one a reliable source of fact. Indeed, given China's history, it would seem that anyone wishing to quote Chinese official documents should first show that evidence that China is a reliable source for anything. And the same could be said about the UN on political matters. The UN is subject to political influence, and the nature of the influence depends on the subject matter. On questions about Taiwan, the UN is so heavily influenced by China that its views cannot be said to be independent. So one the question of how international law views Taiwan, the UN and China are one view, since China isn't a source of international law (except in how it acts through international orgs like the UN). On the question of whether Taiwan is really a state (in the normal sense), the UN and China are one view because the the UN is so heavily influenced by China. Readin 01:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you that the UN is subject to political influence and that it can be biased, unfair, or just wrong. However, that is the nature of the law - it's never "fair and equitable" no matter how much people wish or try to make it so.
I am wondering what you mean by "the normal view". My understanding was that the "state" is a legal concept, as much as the corporation or the partnership - something is either a corporation at law or it is not a corporation at all. You can't have something that is not recognised as a corporation by the law but is a corporation in any "normal" sense.
So applying that view to this situation, something is a state if international law recognises it to be one. Of course, there can be different interpretations of the law, but they are just that - interpretations of the same law. In the Taiwan situation, some would interpret the laws of statehood to be satisfied by Taiwan, others would not. The UN, as a source of customary international law, is one authoritative source. Decisions of international courts and national courts are also authoritative sources, and (as far as I know) the vast majority of case law in that regard holds the same view as the UN's official view
I could be wrong of course. Could you elaborate on what you understand to be the concept of statehood in the non-legal, "common sense" sense? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 19:49, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
According to Merriam-Webster, a state is "a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory; especially : one that is sovereign" or "the operations or concerns of the government of a country" (there are some other definitions having nothing to do with our topic). Nothing about "international law" in there. You are using a narrow definition of the word "state", not the common usage, much like a "stack" in computer science has certain properties ("LIFO") that the word "stack" does not have in common usage. Find someone who is not educated in international politics and who is unfamiliar with the situation of Taiwan. Ask them what makes a state is (if you're asking an American, explain that you mean in the sense of a nation, not in the sense of a province or subsection of a nation). See how many people say that recognition by other states is a necessary attribute. Readin 12:49, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I oppose the use of "two governments" as it is too specific in one sense, too vague in another. Two governments could refer to a situation where a country voluntarily sets up two governments, not where two governments are in opposition to each other. It also fails to note the fact that the country is split into two rival territories. I prefer the term "political entity" as it is suitably vague and could be accepted by anyone, even the Mainland Chinese. That is, the PRC would reject the concept of a Taiwanese "government", but would, I suggest, be willing to accept that Taiwan exists as a political entity -- namely a renegade province that is waiting to come back to the Mainland. :) (I am puzzled by Kirston's challenge to prove the existence of the term "political entity" and his assertion that it sounds "too spiritual". There is nothing "spiritual" about "political entity"; it's a perfectly normal term in law and politics.)
Bathrobe (talk) 01:35, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I also thought of that - government seems to understate the independence/autonomy/etc of ROC- I still personally prefer it as the more precise term - if we were to say they were "rival governments" this would also be fixed.
I do think ¨"entity" sounds spiritual, "political entity" sounds derived and a metaphor -However big my personal dislike/distaste in regards to its vagueness I am neutral on the use of "political entity".
--Keerllston 03:48, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I think one of the benefits of saying "two governments" is that it is obviously true. Both are governments. And it is true with no stance being taken as to whether one or another is a local government as opposed to a national government. "Political entity" is vague as it could refer to a political party, one branch of a government (like the judicial branch) or many other things that exist in politics. But what both the PRC and ROC do is govern the territory they control. "Rival governments" might be confusing because it would suggest that both are trying to govern the same territory when in fact their areas of control are well-established, even if one or both sides make claims and threats to try to extend their control in the future. Neither side is sending policemen into the other's territory to govern. I can live with "political entities", "rival governments", or "governments", but I think "governments" is best. Readin (talk) 04:30, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I can see a problem with "political entity": Currently, Taiwan upholds the principle of "one China, two political entities". This means that political entity represents the Taiwanese position. I'm not sure what the Mainland view is. Could PalaceGuard comment? Bathrobe (talk) 06:12, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Methinks the PRC officially uses that term they used to describe Hong Kong, "One China, two systems"...i think... Avec nat...Wikipédia Prends Des Forces.  06:18, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

One country two systems is a proposal for unification, not a statement of reality. Bathrobe (talk) 06:35, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

From what I have heard/seen in PRC laws and policy announcements, the PRC position is something like this:
"China" is one sovereign entity or country.
"PRC" is a State that represents that sovereignty. The "ROC" is a former State that was wholly replaced by the PRC in 1949.
Taiwan is outside the "territory" of the PRC but within the definition of "China".
The current ROC government, usually but not exclusively referred to as the "Taiwan authority", is a "regime", which controls the Taiwan area, a territory outside the territory of the PRC but within the definition of "China".
I haven't seen "political entity" or the Chinese equivalent thereof used in official or legal sources, but I don't think it's a big problem to say that "regime" fits within the definition of "political entity". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:11, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Support use of "governments derived from rival sides in the Chinese civil war"--Keerllston 12:33, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe this is extremely precise, accurate, verifiable and NPOV.--Keerllston 15:47, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Support use of "autonomous governments". The word "autonomous" is approved for Taiwan by PRC literature when they say they will, under "one party two systems", graciously allow Taiwan to keep some of its "autonomy". The word "autonomy" also clears up confusion about whether one or the other is a sub-government because autonomy means "the quality or state of being self-governing; especially : the right of self-government", "self-directing freedom" and "a self-governing state" ("state" doesn't have to be used in an international law POV), so it accurately reflects the situation. Readin 15:25, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[weakly] oppose use of autonomous - "autonomous regions" include tibet, inner mongolia, clearly under control of the PRC.--Keerllston 15:42, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Gah, I hate to sound like a lawyer on these things, but "autonomous" also has complex connotations that we should avoid. I like either "governments", "regimes", or "political entities", without any extra descriptors that could become problematic. --16:15, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, that was me. it was a type. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 08:34, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Is there any reason for the lack of signature to this statement? I do not believe this is an arbitration, and I personally looked through the edit history and discovered that this was a constant contributor... I believe this was a typo - but I do not know - nor do I know proper process in this case.--Keerllston 14:45, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Support use of "governments derived from rival sides in the Chinese civil war". It works well. "Derived" is especially descriptive for Taiwan because one could argue that the current ROC is not the same ROC that lost the civil war. That ROC was a Chinese dictatorship. The current ROC is a Taiwanese democracy. However, as can be seen by its name, it is indeed "derived" from the earlier ROC. Readin 01:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

About the Chinese civilization

HELLO, the following line will be removed soon:

This article is about the Chinese civilization.

If someone says China is a civilization, then you should say "This article is about China", if someone says China is a country, then you also should say "This article is about China". Any concerns? --Quagliu (talk) 03:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Please stop threatening to disrupt the page.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 04:15, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion going on above concerning this very issue. Before unilaterally deciding that you are going to "implement Wikipedia policies", I suggest you join the discussion. There are definitely problems with the lead, but it affects the entire article, not just the first few lines.
Bathrobe (talk) 05:11, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Sidenote proposal

We need to protect this article from constant disruptive edits by JackyAustine and his/her socks (aka Peter zhou, Lafleur127, etc). I propose that this article be semi-protected as a way to prevent JA, PZ, LF127, and associates (the Socks) from continuing this disruption. If there is consensus to do so, I will lock down this page with a "pp-semi".  Avec nat...Wikipédia Prends Des Forces.  06:43, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

never mind, it looks like most of his socks have been "pre-baked".  Avec nat...Wikipédia Prends Des Forces.  09:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Pseudo linguistics: Qin and China

From the article: The pronunciation of "Qin" is similar to "Chin", which is considered the possible root of the word "China".

That's only true in modern Mandarin. You can't use the modern pronunciation of something to argue for the root of China when the word "China" or "Cina" has existed far longer than the voiceless consonants of Mandarin. The pronunciation of 秦 qin during the Qin Dynasty and up till the 14th century was actually a voiced /dzIn/ ("dzin") or /dZIn/ (like English "gin"). For instance, the more consonant preserved Shanghainese dialect still pronounces 秦 qin like the English "gin." It's actually far more likely that "China" is derived from the longer-lived Jin Dynasty (265–420) (晋) after the Three Kingdoms period, and ruled by the Sima clan. Jin (晋) has always been pronounced with a voiceless /tsin/ or /tSIn/ in all Chinese dialects, and Jin (晋) would have likely been recorded in Sanskrit as "Cin" or "Cina", but not Qin (秦) which would've been "Gin" or "Gina". Also, it was under the Jin Dynasty that Buddhism really flourished, and contact with Sanskrit users widely made. Whereas the Qin Dynasty lasted just 16 years. --Naus (talk) 17:28, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide sources?
Bathrobe (talk) 01:16, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I am all for expansion of the talk of "China" etymology as opposed to "Zhonghuo" - there is an article on that the "Names of China" - I believe the meaningful parts of that article should be in this article - the current consensus there on how to treat the etymology should be carried to this page.--Keerllston 12:30, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Precedents

I believe the context in terms of precedents to this article being about "geographical area" reside in Korea and Ireland. This is proper because China was/is divided into PROC and ROC. And whether one controls more territory (like the side "opposing" Northern Ireland) or whether one is more significant in terms of economy (like South Korea) or whether one is more democratic (like South Korea) or whether common usage is to call one China and the other one something else (Northern Ireland "vs." Ireland -right?) are irrelevant.
I believe the context in terms of precedents in terms of being about civilization is nonexistent. This does not mean it shouldn't be about the civilization.
--Keerllston 12:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Dalai Lama and additional lead paragraph

I doubt the following is true:

The Dalai Lama has stated in the past that "Tibet is not a part of China"[citation needed] and it is an autonomous region within China

--Quagliu 01:55, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Google News: Archives gets quite a few hits.
Xinhua news agency, Beijing - March 7, 1999
China: Tibet's Dalai Lama "obstinate" on independence
"China: Tibet's Dalai Lama "obstinate" on independence In a report from the Tibetan capital, Xinhua news agency says theat over the past four decades, the Dalai Lama has gone too far on his track of attempting to split the motherland. What he has done can only prove that he is the arch-representative of the political clique persisting in splittism and in the attempt to gain "Tibet independence" and a tool of international..."
Had you read earlier I had shown a book source for it. It seems a "Tibetan monk Palden Gyatso" is also a strong advocate for Tibetan independence
--Keerllston 02:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Dalai Lami explicitly said "Tibet is part of China" when he visited Canada in 2004:
http://www.peacehall.com/news/gb/intl/2004/04/200404191452.shtml
达赖曾经对外表示，并未推动西藏独立，不过，达赖此行在加拿大则更进一步强调，「我们真诚地对中国说，西藏是其一部分，西藏的繁荣与发展有赖于中国。」 -- Quagliu 05:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Am I to understand you speak better Mandarin Chinese than English? I would ask you to provide an adequate translation or at the very least, a BabelFish translation.
I am glad you agree with me that the statement Dalai Lama saying in the past that "Tibet is not a part of China" is verifiable - I find it very interesting that it has[n't] occurred on other ocasions.
I believe Google News provides BBC and other news sources as well -I would be interested to see the Indiana University speech transcription.
--Keerllston 11:43, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
It seems I misread your comment's [signification] a bit - perhaps helped by my lack of literacy in Chinese.--Keerllston 11:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Kirlston's lead paragraph

I move that this paragraph should be deleted:

There are a multitude of points of view of what is China. The People's Republic of China supports what is is known as Zhonghua minzu. Whether Inner or Outer Mongolia, Tibet, Andrah Pradesh is are part of China are debated as part of the definition of China as China proper and the Han Chinese ethnicity.

I'm sorry, Kirlston, but I don't think you really understand at all and shouldn't really be inserting such half-baked material. What are the problems?

1. Zhonghua Minzu was not proposed by the Mainland; it was proposed by Sun Yatsen, who is just as much regarded as the father of China by the KMT as by the Communist party. The concept of Zhonghua Minzu is NOT something unique to the Mainland.

2. Inner and Outer Mongolia, Tibet and Andrha Pradesh don't impact on anyone's view of "What is China"? They do have to with what territories belong to China. The thing is that both Taiwan and the Mainland claim to be heirs to the territory of the Qing, and so claim all the current Mainland territories of the PRC, including Tibet. The status of Andrha Pradesh is a legacy of the British and concerns the location of the border between the Qing and British India. Outer Mongolia is the exception; it is territory that the ROC (theoretically) claims and which the PRC tried for many years to have returned to China. At the moment the PRC recognises the existence of the state of Mongolia and Taiwan implicitly does, too.

It is rather strange and actually quite POV to describe this issue as one of 'a multitude of points of view of what is China'. The issue of China proper and Zhonghua minzu does impact on the reinterpretation history of China and is one legitimation of its current territorial claims, but I think most Chinese would agree on the multi-ethnic nature of modern China.

In the absence of a coherent defence of the content of the paragraph, I will be removing it.

I am curious, Kirlston, how much you know about China. Your talk page indicates that you know Spanish, Portuguese, and some French, as well as English "to a professional level", but you don't seem to have any knowledge of any Oriental languages. You've identified Hong Kong as having been under long-term Japanese rule and you have constantly maintained that Siberia has a Chinese legacy, both of which suggest that you are still discovering China yourself and are very much an interested outsider looking in. I strongly suggest that you should gain a better grounding in the history of East Asia before you intervene in articles like this.

Bathrobe 02:01, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

  • minor Modification NOT Deletion as per policy.
    "I suggest [you should know more before you say anything]" - I like Socrates's saying "I know nothing"-it's very similar to the NPOV policy - I believe your comment was very unwiki.
    Siberia perhaps has not "Chinese" but Mongolian heritage - I guess it depends on whether or not Mongolia is China.
    I think it can be sourced better indeed - that the Dalai Lama said "Tibet is not a part of China" sould be cited, agreed.
    The concepts of "Han Chinese" and "China proper" are essential to understanding of the term "China" as is the concept of "Zhonghua minzu"
    --Keerllston 15:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
I suggest that you propose as policy that "only Phd's shall be allowed to edit wikipedia, and only on the topic of their Phd dissertation" if that is your opinion. Perhaps such a proposal is already in place.--Keerllston 15:46, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Two Bachelors degrees with Honours should also qualify 8-) --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 19:42, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with Bathrobe here. Zhonghua minzu is not a Communist concept. And it's a complex topic that cannot be simply resolved with the quoted paragraph above. Either way, Keerston/Kirlston needs to proofread what he reads more. I read the paragraph thrice and still don't understand what the point was. --Naus 20:27, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
  • And what the hell is "Andrah Pradesh"??? Did you mean Arunachal Pradesh? Andhra Pradesh is in South India. Someone delete this crap from Keerston/Kirlston. --Naus 20:30, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Please be civil and do not call contributions crap. As I have said please modify rather than delete if you can do so well bad quality is not a reason for deletion.
      I meant the region of India currently claimed by the PRC - I knew of Andrah Pradesh, I must have confused the two.--Keerllston 20:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
      • It is CRAP when you write "Andrah Pradesh" or imply that Zhonghua minzu was created by the PRC. Others have noted these errors and removed them, yet you continue to put the CRAP back up. What is your agenda? Wikipedia isn't a democracy, and everything you write can be mercilessly edited, especially when it's CRAP and absolutely NONSENSE. --Naus 20:55, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
        • My contributions are "crap"? I have an "agenda"? My contribution was "patent nonsense"? I will not engage in an edit war.--Keerllston 21:02, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
        • Note, an addition to my original paragraph was also deleted by Naus's "merciless editing"--Keerllston 21:09, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Kirston, the problem is that your lack of knowledge is leading to the writing of what people are describing as "crap". I don't expect you to have a PhD, but your continued muddling of the facts and misapprehensions lead me to feel that you are biting off more than you can chew. Sure, I can go in and edit any articles, even things I know nothing about, and that's totally in the spirit of Wikipedia. But when you state that Siberia has a Chinese legacy, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam are part of China, Andrah Pradesh is part of the disputed identity of China (yeah, I missed that one), Hong Kong was under long-term Japanese control, etc., then I really think you should restrain yourself from putting rubbish in the article.
Your additional paragraph is totally unbalanced and unenlightening. It's original research at its worst -- twaddle written by someone who knows nothing about the subject. It shouldn't be appearing on Wikipedia. That might sound "unwiki-like", but given the drive for verifiability, cites, etc. etc., it's hard to see how you are justified in posting such half-digested mush on a page that is the subject of controversy.
Bathrobe 01:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

NPA and CIVIL

"Totally unbalanced" - "original research at its worst" - "twaddle written by someone who knows nothing about the subject" - "half-digested mush"
Have you gone to the page China Proper? Zhonghua minzu? these are words that we have used quite a bit here in this talk page. Their wikipedia articles have no [referenced](missing word added--13:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)) information.
I find your comments rather uncivil - do I know nothing about china? is that your opinion? I find that quite insulting - a comment on my knowledge of china - which is obviously in East Asia, obviously an ancient civilization, obviously many things.
Unwiki like? definitely. It's hard to see how you are justified in your insulting comments, or how Naus is justified in his merciless editing and his uncivil attitude.
--Keerllston 01:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry if you don't like my comments. But I have pointed out that you are extremely prone to factual and conceptual errors -- this is fact, not opinion. I've also pointed out below, at length, why I feel that your added paragraph is totally off the mark. Please read it and tell me what you think.
Bathrobe 03:18, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I say I hoped at least for an apology- and that I didn't say I disliked your comments, I said I found them insulting.
Neither were forthcoming apologies for your uncivility which was clear, nor for personal attacks which was pretty clear in the statement "twaddle written by someone who knows nothing about the subject"
I am dissapointed
My feelings were hurt, where before I saw you as a nice guy, now I see you as unwiki... ahhh
So sad the life of men and mice. That the mighty gods step on them and do not even apologize.
- I take it in good cheer is what I mean mind you - I am no mouse, and you are no god, (neither am I a god nor you a mouse either)
At length indeed you spoke and so little on my alleged "absolute lack of knowledge" of China!
--Keerllston 03:46, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Kirlston, I take this opportunity to apologise for my insulting comments. While you are obviously a person with both an education and gentlemanly manners, I noticed that you made quite a few comments that appeared to demonstrate a lack of understanding of China and its history. So I will admit that I was rather upset that you went in and added that paragraph, which I felt was so far off the mark. I'm not a god, and my knowledge of history is relatively superficial. However, I do feel that any editing to do with China has to be done very cautiously. I don't think Naus's reaction is anything out of the ordinary, because the people in these countries (China, Mongolia, etc.) feel quite passionately about this subject. It's not something that you can go in and change lightly.
At any rate, I admit that my sense of exasperation got the better of me and my choice of words was perhaps less temperate than it should have been. I apologise for the insulting remarks.
Bathrobe 04:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Thankyou I appreciate your comments. I am glad we are able to be civil with each other.--Keerllston 04:41, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Apology not accepted - After further talk with Bathrobe, I have found his behavior lacking. He referred to his comments as "insulting in tone" as if "insulting" were not proper description.
This does not constitute civility.
He quotes Naus' support and Quangliu's (presumably - perhaps other "Chinese editors" liked his comments as well?) one has clearly been lacking in civility and the other was a sockpuppet.
--Keerllston 02:18, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Kirlston has withdrawn his acceptance because I continue to disagree with what he did. He is making "civility" the touchstone for editing the article. I'm sorry, I believe that his additional paragraph was totally misguided and that it should not have been added to the article without gaining a consensus from other editors. To post a paragraph on something you are not very knowledgeable about, provoking other editors so strongly that they stoop to calling it "crap", and then claim to have been insulted at the strong reaction, strikes me as lacking in humility. Kirlston has made serious, elementary errors in his statements about China. His edits are starting to look like a bull in a china shop, and I don't see why I should stand by and watch him edit nonsense into the article. When a person with such a woeful grasp of the facts of East Asia is talking about rewriting the article on "China" so that it includes Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Mongolia in "China", I can't stand aside and watch without lodging a protest. Kirlston accuses me of believing that I own the article. On the contrary, I have made virtually no edits to the article. It is Kirlston who seems to believe that he owns the article and is relentlessly pushing in one direction based on his own lack of knowledge. Since I have come to have strong personal feelings about the way this article is being edited, I have decided to withdraw from the editing process. I will also be deleting my contributions to the talk page below given that Kirlston seems to feel that anything with the support of Chinese editors who violently oppose his own woeful efforts must be wrong. Bathrobe (talk) 03:35, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I never accepted the apology
- I intentionally didn't do that in the beginning - I perhaps implied acceptance - I didn't accept because I thought Bathrobe's apology might be due to fear of getting banned rather than true "repentance".
I am glad Bathrobe has withdrawn from the editing of China - perhaps he is not able to be civil where there is controversy, there is definitely controversy in China.
He definitely made uncivil comments - including personal attacks.
It seems he has problems with wikipedia policies such as "Be Bold" among others.
--Keerllston 09:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Why should I be afraid of being banned? I overdid the language, but what I said was true. That's why I apologised for the language, but not for the factual content of what I posted. I thought you were wrong to post that half-baked paragraph and still think you were wrong.

I suggest you google the term "Surgipedia". It is a very funny caricature of what goes on on Wikipedia, and it sounds a bit like your "bold" editing of the China article. (Links to Encyclopedia Dramatica's version of Surgipedia are also blacklisted by Wikipedia -- very interesting!)

I also find it interesting that you are actively encouraging an editor who doesn't like your editing style to leave. Very nice. I guess there's not enough room at the China article for both you and me. Guess who thinks he's got the God-given right to stay? :) Well, with me gone that will be one less person to oppose your edits, which should make life more comfortable for you.

Bathrobe (talk) 11:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought you were leaving talk:China... --Keerllston 11:30, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Second Proposal

China is defined differently by different people. The People's Republic of China supports a multinational definition of China known as Zhonghua minzu which was originally developed by Sunyat Sen of the Republic of China. China is also defined as China proper and the Han Chinese ethnicity which excludes Tibet, Mongolia, and Andrukah Pradesh. Advocates of Taiwan Independence define China as not including Taiwan.

Given the opposition, I have tried to improve it--Keerllston 21:09, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Expansion Draft

Another draft?

China is defined differently by different people. The People's Republic of China supports a multinational definition of China known as Zhonghua minzu which was originally developed by Sunyat Sen of the Republic of China. China defined as the Han Chinese is termed China proper and excludes Tibet, Mongolia, Andrukah Pradesh among others. China as termed as Mainland China excludes both Hong Kong and Taiwan. Advocates of Taiwan Independence define China as not including Taiwan. Free Tibet Advocates define China as not including Tibet. (Other independent movements?)

Obviously it can get bigger. The bigger it gets... the more it looks as though it deserves a section somewhere in the article. Perhaps called "Definition" or something... "Inclusions" "Ethnicities" "Demographics" --Keerllston 01:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem with the paragraph is that it is fundamentally coming from the wrong direction. You can tinker all you like, it won't remove the basic flaw: "China is defined differently by different people" is the wrong approach to the issue. Bathrobe 01:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Attempt to address objection
Do any of the following please?
"There are different points of view on China's definition"?
"There are different point of view on the definition of China"?
"China does not refer to Japan, or to the Korea, or to Outer Mongolia, or to Vietnam. Whether it refers to other regions in it's vicinity is in debate."?
"The definition of "China" is debated."
--Keerllston 01:57, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I will attempt to outline why I feel that your paragraph is coming from the wrong direction. This is my take on modern China.
(Removed)
Bathrobe 03:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I believe Bathrobe just gave a very neutral and unbiased view. Advice to Bathrobe, talking to people with anti-China ideology is just a waste of time. --Quagliu 05:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I think Bathrobe gave a very good description of what has happened, but I'm not sure how it invalidates Dwarf's proposals. In fact it his explanation of how mondern PRC nationals, particularly those of Han ethnicity, view "modern China" as a legacy of the Qing gives a perfect example of how "China" means different things to different people. I think Dwarf's paragraph needed some polishing, but the basic idea is good. For one thing, it made an opportunity to provide balance to the earlier paragraphs' implications and POV that Taiwan is part of China. As we've seen from the map discussions, the borders of "China" (whether it be the country, state, civilization or whatever) are hotly debated. Explaining that in the introductory section seems like a good idea. Readin 12:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


(Removed)
Bathrobe (talk) 02:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
That is very true. The legacy of Qing is profound in the foundation of modern China. And none of these are anti-China ideaology. Pojanji (talk) 03:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Sidenote: Quagliu has been indefinitely blocked as a sockpuppet of Peter zhou as a result of an operation involving the use of a checkuser to flush out Peter zhou's prebaked socks –nat.utoronto 04:45, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

4th Draft

How do we define China? Zhonghua minzu is a the idea of a multi-national and multi-ethnic China. It has been supported by States controlling China since the Manchus started it. China proper is the idea of a mono-ethnic China mainly comprised of the Han Chinese ethnicity and areas historically controlled by the Han Chinese. Independence Movements often consider their region not a part of China.

better?--Keerllston 04:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't like this draft, either. You've mashed all kinds of facts together that are conceptually separate.
  • The Manchus did not start Zhongha minzu. They appeared in the 16th century. Sun Yatsen did. He was late 19th-early 20th century. The Manchus established the multi-ethnic state that we have today, although the multi-ethnic state under them was very different in many ways from the state we have today. Zhonghua minzu is essentially a modern concept created to maintain a multi-ethnic empire in the modern era.
  • China proper is a valid historical concept, but to posit it as the main feature of China today is highly POV, because the way you've put it here, it almost implies that the Chinese should stay in China proper and leave the territory of other ethnicities alone. That is why the Chinese don't like the term "China proper"! (Also, who is pushing the concept of "China proper"? It's a concept that is used by academics and people who want to talk about, well, China proper. But I'm not aware that "China proper" had come to the forefront as a theoretical concept in discussions about independence for Tibet or Xinjiang....
I really don't think that this paragraph adds anything meaningful and opens a can of worms. It's going to create a whole new controversy in the China article.
Bathrobe 05:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Oppose. China is clearly defined in other encyclopedias, dictionaries. China is China, it's a country! Please don't be part of anti-China folks, “不做反华份子。” --Quagliu 05:11, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
There's your first response. Your characterisation of China is going to be regarded as "anti-Chinese" by 99.99% of Chinese. I say we should leave the paragraph out. The best you can hope for is a brief historical summary of the Qing background and how the Qing laid the immediate basis for modern China. Don't even start talking about Zhonghua minzu. The Chinese believe in implicitly in the doctrine of Zhonghua Minzu. It's part of being Chinese. :) I've had young Chinese people tell me that "Zhonghua minzu came first, and only then the various ethnicities of China". It's not rational, but there's no sense in putting up a completely opposing view (which is equally POV) and expecting people to accept it without challenge.
Bathrobe 05:58, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
On the value of Quangliu's response:
I value more (your) (Bathrobe's) input, as well as that of Palaceguard, Jiang, and Readin (among other constant and not disruptive contributors).
Quangliu's repeated assertions "China is a country" "China is China" and so on - help very little
--Keerllston 10:58, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
anti-China notes:
"[...]other communities which are culturally Chinese but remain politically distinct in one way or another (such as the Chinese in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the USA), there is significant prejudice and discrimination against mainland Chinese, [...]"
I think the accusation of sinophobia is rather unsourced.
- It seems you are a supporter of the People's Republic of China and it's definition of China and therefore it's definition of anti-China.
What do you think of Andrukah Pradesh?
--Keerllston 11:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Bathrobe, Dwarf's original paragraph said there were many different views of what is "China". You're saying the Chinese (PRC Han) have a different view. Doesn't that reinforce Dwarf's original paragraph? We're not supposed to describe China only as Chinese see it. We're supposed to describe multiple POVs.
On a related note to everyone, one thing I'm starting to notice on a lot of discussions of issues surrounding China is people often try to explain that in Chinese, a particular word means one thing and therefore that's how the Wiki article should use it. For example, someone might argue that the Chinese word for "China" is "Zhongguo" and that in China, the precise meaning of "Zhongguo" is X, therefor our article on "China" should talk about X. But we're working on the English version of Wikipedia. The article on "China" should describe be about the concepts that English speakers define as "China", not the concepts Chinese speakers define as "Zongguo". This "Zhonghua minzu" is not something that English speakers equate with "China" and should not be the main focus of the English article on "China". Readin 13:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you (Readin).
except perhaps for 'Zhonghua mizu should not be the main focus of the english article' - Zhonghua minzu is a significant point of view and should be adressed.
- China as a cultural region does include Korea and other places such as Outer Mongolia, right? Sources sources sources...
hmmm... do you know the phrase "multipolar world"?
I am glad for your comments, Readin.
--Keerllston 13:25, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Opposition to Controversy

Who doesn't want to open a can of worms even if it will help them fish?
In order for this article to get anywhere it must define China and there are different points of view - which is clea[r] when one reads China proper and Zhonghua minzu
--Keerllston 10:58, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree completely. And in fact there are more views than just China proper and Zhonghua minzu. There is the view that China=PRC, for example. Readin 13:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Agreed Completely, also [(the view)--11:14, 5 December 2007 (UTC)] that "Taiwan" is not China :D -And Obviously "Outer" and "Inner" Mongolia.
How about Southern Japan - lots of Chinese influence, (in simple terms) they even eat (what is stereotypically) the same food - pork, where the rest of Japan eats raw fish. Not that I want to insert OR mind you - but someone else probably has seen this and noted this in some research journal...--Keerllston 10:08, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that eating pork constitutes a valid reason for assigning southern Japan to "Chinese civilisation". There is lots of Chinese influence in Asia. No one is denying that. There is also lots of Japanese influence in Taiwan and even China (though the Chinese usually wont' admit it). There is also a huge Western influence on Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Mongolia, etc.
I just can't see the point of all this.
Bathrobe (talk) 02:19, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
The point is that we can include Japan or not depending on how we define "China", so we need to define it to clear up these kinds of questions. For example, if we define "China" as a civilization, then we need to look at what make civilization? The biggest attributes, the ones that are pretty much required for the rest of them, are writing and agriculture. It's pretty easy to make a prima facie case that Japan and Korea got their agricultural methods and writing from China. Readin (talk) 02:29, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Could you come up with a few sources for this (assigning Japan to Chinese civilisation? Also, I don't believe that we have a consensus that the article on "China" is no longer about the country and is about the "civilisation".
Bathrobe (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 02:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
I believe the fact that Japanese writing was an import (with modifications) from China is pretty well known and uncontroversial. You may correct me if I'm wrong. The Wikipedia article on rice (staple agriculture of China and Japan) says it was first domesticated in China and also that the mainstream view is that it spread to Japan from China. Given that agriculture and writing are generally considered the foundations of civilization, and that both spread to Japan from China, are they not the same civilization (even if they aren't the same linguistic, culture and/or racial group)? The gut response from an educated person is that Japan is not part of China for a multitude of reasons (different culture, very different language, different government, etc.), but if you focus on civilization, then it is something to discuss. But if the article on "Chinese civilization" also includes a lot of other baggage (government, culture, etc.) then how can you discuss the civilization aspect without constant interference and objections that have nothing to do with civilization? Similarly, if we are trying to decide whether to include "Tibet" in China as the PRC, we can discuss it without objections that the culture is different or the history is different.
As for the consensus that China is a civilization, right now if you type in "Chinese Civilization" as your search term, you go straight to the "China" page. The first line of this page says "This article is about the Chinese civilization. For other uses, see China (disambiguation)." So right now, the incumbent "China" article is "Chinese Civilization". But because most people don't think of "Chinese Civilization" when they think of "China" (most think of the PRC) we are having great difficulty maintaining that decision. Remember Quagliu and his constant attempts to change the first paragraph to say "China is a country" rather than "China is a civilization". Readin (talk) 04:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Whatever the ins and outs of the discussion are, there is no way that you can include "Japan" in an article on "China"! The result is simply unacceptable from any point of view. What would you think if the USA was included in the article on say United Kingdom, because after going backwards and forwards on England, Britain, British Isles, Great Britain, we all decided to make the UK article into an article on "British Civilisation", and we decided the the US was a part of "British Civilisation"? There is just no way that would be acceptable to anyone, British, American, or anyone else. So why do you want to do the same to Japan? Bathrobe (talk) 04:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought Bathrobe was leaving talk:china...--Keerllston 11:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Not that I have any say in the matter, but in my opinion Bathrobe is welcome to stay. He makes useful contributions. You guys seem to have some sort of conflict where feelings are getting hurt, but you both make useful contributions and I hope you can look past the feelings and focus on what makes a good article. Readin (talk)
I agree, Bathrobe has made many good contributions.
However I am heavily disappointed by his inability to properly apologize - and stick to his apology. He made personal attacks, was uncivil, and has shown himself aggressive and "unrepentant" afterwards.
Furthermore I believe his interpretation of the "Be Bold" policy or rather opposition to it is unwiki
- Thus, I would not welcome him back.
--Keerllston 15:34, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
If the article were on "British Civilization", as opposed to England or some of the other things you mention, then why would I object to the USA (and Australia, New Zealand and Canada) being included? Although I'm not sure that "British" counts as a civilization. A better place to include the USA might be "European Civilization", even though the USA is not part of the continent of Europe, nor is it a part of the European Union, nor would most people generally say the USA is part of "Europe". But if we decided that the term "Europe" would link to an article on "European Civilization", We would probably need to include the USA. In some ruminations on the matter much earlier on this discussion page, I said one of my concerns with the term "Chinese civilization" s that we maybe should be talking about something "East Asian civilization" because the civilization China is part of doesn't exist only within China. Readin (talk) 15:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Chinese Civilization is one thing that is commonly talked about (google search anyone?). East Asian Civilization is a related topic, but not the same topic.--Keerllston 15:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
I would welcome Bathrobe to stay. Even though we sometimes disagree on issues, Bathrobe is a valuable and reasoned contributor who brings a valuable perspective to the topics at hand. You guys should sort out your personal issues and not let it affect the discussion.
As to the discussion, all this talk about Japan (I presume that what you meant at the beginning was Ryukyu/Okinawa? Ryukyu cuisine is the one that eats a lot of pork) being in or out of the "Chinese civilisation" must be resolved by reference to reliable sources. If you have reliable sources that state "and the Chinese civilisation encompasses Japan", then yes it is in. If no such sources can be found, then no it is out. To do otherwise would be original research.
Finally, just about the general tenor of this discussion ("let's decide what China is"), that should not be the approach we take. An encyclopaedia documents things. We know there are many meanings of China. Let us first look at the existing China-related articles, and decide whether any of these meanings is not adequately covered. Once we decide that, for example, an article on Chinese civilisation is required, we write it up, or at least figure out what should be in that article.
Once we have articles covering "China" in all its senses, then we decide which one to call it. At that point, it may well be that China should be a disambiguation page. It may also be that China should be the title of the article on the Chinese civilisation.
Appreciate, however, that the question of "what needs to be covered" is a question antecedent to and separate from the question of "what should appear under the title of China". The former is a content question, the latter a naming conflict issue.
Wikipedia is not a dictionary: we don't go out there, look for a word (China) and then define it (except, in a limited sense, on disambiguation pages).
We find an object or concept that needs documentation, then, if there is an issue about its name, we resolve it by naming conflict rules and dismabiguation mechanisms.
So the first question is: what really needs documentation here? What is something that's notable but is not covered elsewhere? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:45, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
We have a lot of articles on China already, including this article on Chinese Civilization. Perhaps we could (see proposal 11 above) first change the name of this article to reflect the niche that it fills, Chinese Civilization. This would clarify that it is not meant to be a definition of China, but merely to cover one aspect of "China". Searching for "China" could still bring a user here (we may want to change that after more discussion), but it would be clear to editors that this page is only about the civilization, not about the definition of "China". We could then discuss questions like whether or not to include Japan more rationally (I have an open mind on that question). We could also focus separately on PalaceGuard008's suggestion that Once we have articles covering "China" in all its senses, then we decide which one to call it., and as he suggests we resolve it by naming conflict rules and dismabiguation mechanisms. Readin (talk) 19:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Banner to notify Chinese version of this wiki page

Proposal to include a banner notifying the reader if this page's contents are visible in china itself or if it is modified by Chinese internet gateways. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.203.60.221 (talk) 22:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

How would such a banner work? Readin (talk) 00:01, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Archiving?=

“ This page is 137 kilobytes long. It may be helpful to move older discussion into an archive subpage. See Help:Archiving a talk page for guidance. ”

how 'bout it?--Keerllston 10:55, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

We need to reach some agreements before doing any substantial archiving. Age isn't the important thing, relevence is. Readin (talk) 02:34, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

State/Land/Kingdom

Here are my random, nonsensical, unorganized thoughts. 國 could mean land/state/kingdom. The character itself is interesting . . . . it has a radical representing weapon, a radical presenting mouths to feed, a stroke representing land, and a box representing the boundary. The PRC claims that Taiwan has not gone back to the embrace of the "motherland" (zuoguo/祖國), but I could play around with the translation and say "mother country" or "mother state." Doesn't the fact that Taiwan hasn't been reunified with the mainland indicate that Taiwan and the mainland are currently separate states? Ironic then that there is an anti-secession law when Taiwan and the mainland aren't reunified.

Isn't the modern state a political community? The political community known as the Republic of China has citizens that pledge allegiance to it, pay taxes, get conscripted, and use passports that are recognized by nearly all countries of the world. But the point here is that we shouldn't answer to many questions or be too precise. On the other hand, should Wikipedia become the imptetus for Taiwan independence supporters as a rationale to declare explicit independence as soon as possible because they are humiliated that the Wikipedia says that the Republic of China/Taiwan reckons itself to be a state and has a downgraded status in the Wikipedia's List of Sovereign States? On the other hand, the PRC will never be happy with the Wikipedia for not following the eternally correct ideology of the CCP and will always ban parts of the Wikipedia no matter how much we try to appease it. The sad thing here is that what ever direction we go, we unintentionally set a political agenda even if we honestly claim that we do not.

Sorry, my thoughts are way too unorganized right now . . . . . Allentchang (talk) 12:01, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Yea, I agree. The last part. Just kidding.

Edits by Aranherunar relating to the Four Cardinal Barbarians and the circle picture

I just did some major rewriting for both the China and Names of China parts on the etymologies, using the Chinese Wikipedia and citing ancient texts. I see no disputable change in my edits - however, given the conservative nature of all editors and the fact that there were several lengthy discussions over the topic, I would be glad to give an explanation of all of my changes if any user feels necessary. Thanks. Aran|heru|nar 12:26, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

  • What you wrote is somewhat misleading, its static interpretation of China's position as the "center of civilisation" can be falsely interpreted by China-bashers as Chinese chauvinism and by Korean nationalists as validation of Dongyi to be separate from China. The reality isn't so static. The Zhou Dynasty actually viewed its predecessor the Shang Dynasty (the first non-legendary Chinese dynasty) as Dongyi. Confucius himself was of Dongyi ancestry (he said this himself). Is Confucius not Chinese? Is our Chinese characters used by the Shang not Chinese? Most of Eastern China today (from Shandong to Shanghai) is of Dongyi heritage, and this distinction can be observed even to this day. Zhongguo or proto-Chinese as we know it is actually an amalgation of western Huaxia tribes, eastern Dongyi tribes and south-central Miaoman tribes. All three seeked "Zhongguo" as their core and in the name of legitimacy. Your paragraph failed to mention this critical assimilation in Chinese history (of course, it's hard to do all this in the etymology section). --Naus (talk) 20:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Here's an excerpt from A Nation-State in Construction by Suisheng Zhao, published by Stanford University Press:
“ It is said there were a variety of ancient tribes residing on the Central Plain, around the areas of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, known as the cradle of Chinese civilization. These ancient Chinese tribes belonged to several big groups. Bai Shouyi divided them into three groups. One group, composed of the legendary Huang Di (Yellow Emperor, origin of Xia Dynasty) and Yan Di (Yan Emperor, origin of Zhou Dynasty), developed along the Wei River and later moved toward the Yellow River area and eventually settled down in what are today the provinces of Shaanxi, Henan, and Hebei. The second group, known as the Eastern Barbarians (dongyi, origin of Shang Dynasty) originated in what is today Shandong Province and settled around today's Henan, Hebei, and Anhui Provinces. The legendary Man You, who fought Huang Di, and Fei Cui who used arrows to shoot down suns, were members of this group. The third group, known as Miao Barbarians (miaoman), populated what is today Hubei, Henan, and Jiangxi provinces. The legendary Fuxi and Nuwa as well as Pangu belonged to this group.... In a critique of the mythological claim that the ancient pre-Qin dynasties of Wudi, Xia, Shang, and Zhou were already unitary Chinese states, Guo Dalie has objected that "Wudi's rule could not have possibly reached to a large part of China..." In addition, Gu Bao has stated, "the historians who claimed that pre-Qin China was a unitary state were not reflecting historical reality but were rather trying to impose the idea of great unity." ”
--Naus (talk) 20:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
  • My revisions to Aranherunar paragraph: I replaced "ethnic groups" with "peoples" (removing a source of contention on the question of who and what is Chinese). I removed the circle picture which was written mostly in Chinese and controversial in its dubious breadth of applicability. It needs to be stressed that the use of Zhongguo was more about political legitimacy than about ethnic groups. I also removed the ""Eight famous mountains are there in Tianxia. Three are in Man and Yi. Five are in Zhongguo" quote. This quote was misquoted by Aranherunar. It should be "Three are in Man and Yi. Five are in Zhonghua (中华)". --Naus (talk) 21:36, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
For the quote, actually, I think I was correct. The original text according to [1] is: 天下名山八，而三在蠻夷，五在中國。中國華山﹑首山﹑太室﹑泰山﹑東萊，此五山黃帝之所常遊，與神會... I don't know which source you are drawing from, but I'm pretty sure this is the original quote. Mind if I add it back?
The use of Zhongguo became more about political legitmacy only after it was widely used, I believe. Its initial use has nothing to do with political legitimacy and either originates from the "center of civilization" concept or simply denotes a geographic location.
The "center of civilization" claim is merely a concept that is accepted by all those who identified themselves as the more civilized or as "Chinese" or "Han". It has nothing to do with whether or not the Chinese is really that "Chinese". We know that the Jin Dynasty actually called the Southern Song "Manzi" (蛮子), despite the fact that the Southern Song are probably more "Chinese" than they are. True descendants of the "Chinese" of the Zhou dynasty in, say, the Tang Dynasty, is probably less than 10%, but still the Tang (where the first emperor had half Xianbei ancestry) call others "Dongyi", "Xirong" and not themselves. In fact, its royal surname "Li", which has become the most popular surname in China, is of Xianbei origins (actually, of Chinese origins, but given to the Xianbei). Or another example - in both the Yuan and Qing dynasties, which were ruled by minorities, they called the Japanese "Dongyi" (and in Qing, the Europeans as well), despite the fact that themselves were actually "Beidi". You made a point in that assimilation forms a crucial part of Chinese history, but this would be difficult to explain and probably not notable enough in an article as important as China. We could add that to the Names of China article, if you agree.
For the "circle picture", I think it'd be a valuable addition and a good explanation of the "centre of civilization" concept, which is the origin of the Zhongguo name, after all. Would you accept it if it is translated to English? Aran|heru|nar 06:12, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Stalemate

I am not sure that the use of the word stalemate to describe the outcome of the Civil War is appropriate. A stalemate is when neither side can claim victory, which is surely not the case here... 158.143.8.12 (talk) 17:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but there is hardly room for a longer description. A stalemate is accurate enough, I guess. At the moment, neither could completely eliminate the other, which is their goal. If their goals cannot be accomplished, I suppose a stalemate is a good description. Aran|heru|nar 09:35, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Problem with Christian users and Christianity in China

Protection Discussion

Protection

This article urgently needs unprotecting as it is such an important place and we cannot allow sock to disrupt so. Thoughts. Thanks, SqueakBox 21:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Would semi-protection work? SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
No...I've been harassed by his socks the last few days and all of them have been created a year ago. I try a few checkuser "raids" on his sleeper socks, but it seems like he has more on different IP ranges. nat.utoronto 16:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
If he's that intent that it's been a year about the only real thing to do is get an admin with CU involved who can act quickly and directly. Everytime he edits, make an immediate ban and CU immediately. The article can't stay protected again a single grudge user. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
I brought in a few and they're already tired dealing with him. This measure was extreme but necessary. I agree, it can't stay protected forever, but we need some better methods of dealing with this, or else unprotecting the article will been a greater threat to the article than my protecting of it. nat.utoronto 17:03, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
It can't stay fully protected for long. This process seems to indicate a flaw in wikipedia management, we cannot lock an article because people are tired are tired of dealing with one troublesome individual when the article is China. Schmucky's comments seem to indicate the way to go. Lock it till Saturday for instance would eb fine but an indefinite lock is not at all fine. Thanks, SqueakBox 17:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry but I cannot (1) reveal any timeline as to when this article or Names of China will be unprotected, (2) unprotected just because this is an important article. This is due to the result of another CU report into that had been just complete yesterday that found 30 sleeper sockpuppets that include the 2 that we have already suspected below, that spans over two ISPs (or Internet Service Providers) and 18 to 20 different IP ranges. From experience, unprotecting an article at a time like this would not be beneficial to the article, and would in fact cause more harm, as I suspect there are more sleeper sockpuppets and we have not found them all. nat.utoronto 20:53, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
My attempts to get other administrators to act on the obvious sockpuppetry was met with zero response. If we had more active admins willing to block on sight, we could unlock the article. The sad state is that the sock puppet reporting page takes several days before anyone cares and the ANI page is only read by admins engaging in wiki-politics. There essentially is no Admin-911 and the people watching this page for problems don't have blocking ability.
Also, The response of other people on this page to to engage the sock in dialogue was also annoying. Revert, block, ignore. Do not engage disruptive sockpuppets in dialogue. They have a single issue and do not care about talking, so don't. The project gains nothing, and they gain attention. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
What exactly is going on? I can't quite follow the discussion. Currently, I believe that the article is Semi-protected. But just three minutes ago, I had to delete a certain succession of extremely offensive swearing, by whom I can't quite figure yet. As I don't understand the current situation, do you think that it's the sockpuppets, or is it just a random spammer? IceUnshattered (talk) 01:45, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Nat, remove protection ASAP.

Nat, this page is a very important page, remove the protection ASAP. I think you and the other guy should discuss on the content, but not revert all the time. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM HERE? By the way, I need to edit NOW! --Qaicruvau (talk) 16:29, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you not perhaps the problem? If you are please go away and let others edit the encyclopedia. Thanks, SqueakBox 17:41, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Who are SqueakBox and Qaicruvau. I've not seem them editing or contributing to discussion before. Why are they suddenly so eager to edit? Readin (talk) 17:56, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I want to edit this page, is there a problem? --Qaicruvau (talk) 16:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
What specifically do you need to edit? It is common to discuss edits before making them on such an important page. Readin (talk) 16:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
For every edit, minor or major, do people need to discuss first? --Qaicruvau (talk) 16:48, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
In this case, due to some sock puppetry issue, the answer seems to be yes. That's what happens when a small number of people cause trouble; they make life difficult for everyone. Just like everyone going through the long lines at the airport because a few people hijacked planes. Readin (talk) 17:06, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Qaicruvau is someone whose first edit was above. I´ll just remove them as banned user comments from now on. Readin, I never said I wanted to edit China, please do not put words into my mouth. SqueakBox, if you check my contribs, is a wikipedia editor and that I have never edited China before could not be less relevant. I have issues with an article of this level of importance being locked. Reader with me you need to assume good faith. Thanks, SqueakBox 21:59, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
I was perhaps confused by your earlier response. Was it directed at user:nat or at user:Qaicruvau? I thought you were being nasty toward nat, which made me suspicious particularly when sock puppets are the issue. Sorry about putting words in your mouth.
An article of this importance has pros and cons to having a lock. On one hand, it is important that improvements can continue to be made. On the other hand, a high profile article is more like to draw vandals and POV pushers. I'm not real happy that a lock was needed, but there weren't too many constructive edits being made anyway. When we do decide what constructive edits need to be made, I assume nat will unlock it promptly so we can take out the carving knives.
I'm a bit confused by the whole edit war. It looked like both sides were sourcing their comments and it looked like both sides had a valid POV that could be represented. Translation is never exact - even staying within a single language definitions are never exact. I was amazed that there could be such a heated argument over whether China is better translated as "Central Nation" or "Middle Kingdom" or whatever. I didn't actually read it that close because it doesn't seem like it should be that big of a deal. Readin (talk) 04:19, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
It's not such a big deal, actually. Except for people with an agenda to make a big name out of minor authors. That seems to be what the sock is pushing. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
I have no opinions about or problems with the text or content that Peter zhou/JackyAustine/Whatever-his/her-username-is, the problem I have is with the constant abuse of our policies on sockpuppetry, personal attacks, civility, and harassment by PZ/JA. nat.utoronto 06:13, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
That's YOUR business with that guy, not my business, and you shouldn't protect the entire article! I NEED TO EDIT NOW!! Remove the protection IMMEDIATELY. --Qaicruvau (talk) 16:45, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree it is important for contributions to be made. However, it is exactly because the article is important that I don't see the need to make such hasty contributions and edits. If you see the need to make a significant change, and I believe most changes on the article are significant, discuss. I don't see anyone discussing here on how to improve the article, so I see a reason to unprotect.
The edit war, I believe, is over. What Peter zhou doing now is simply harassment, as I have already made a large (and, as I have said, well referenced) edit to the part in concern and he has not attempted any discussion over the new edit but has simply removed it and put in the old one. Thank you. Aran|heru|nar 12:09, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I wasn't being nasty to Nat and certainly do not see him as responsible for the problem, which is sockpuppetry. Thanks, SqueakBox 16:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Qaicruvau, if you see a need for some urgent editing, why not post your edit here? One of the admins can insert it for you while we work out what to do with sockpuppetry. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 17:38, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Qaicruvau, if you wish to edit, the process is going to be longer than just clicking "edit this page" and typing. As this article is currently under some extreme but necessary measures, the only way you can edit is by putting a proposal here, gain consensus with the other editors, once that is reached, you can place an {{editprotect}} on this page and the proposal below the template. nat.utoronto 20:17, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

OK. --Qaicruvau (talk) 19:01, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Topic

It seems the article was already very powerfully protected by something like a "consensus" against changing anything.--Keerllston 17:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Narrowing down the proposals

So far, this is how it looks to me. I hope I got everyone's view correctly. Feel free to update if I put you a spot you feel you don't belong.

#2 China is the PRC

Supported by Readin, Bathrobe, SchmuckyTheCat

Opposed by Keerllston, Jiang

#3 China links to disambiguation page

Supported by Readin, PalaceGuard008

Opposed by Keerllston, SchmuckyTheCat, Jiang

#5 China is an ancient cultural and geographic entity in continental East Asia

Supported by Jiang

Opposed by Keerllston (weakly), SchmuckyTheCat

#10 China is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and a national or multinational entity in East Asia.

Supported by Keerllston, Jiang

#11 Rename this page to "Chinese Civilization. For now, searching for "China" will bring a user to this page.

Supported by Readin, PalaceGuard008

Opposed by Benjwong, Keerlston, Jiang

#12 Rename this page to "Chinese Civilization. Replace this page with "China is a country..."

Supported by PalaceGuard008, Keerllston

Opposed by Readin, Jiang

#12a Do not rename -rather create "Chinese Civilization" Replace lead with 12's "China is a country..." Supported by Kirlston Palaceguard008


#13 [the current page becomes "Chinese Civilization" and] Searching for "China" links to PRC page. (practically the same as 3 and/or 2)

Supported by Readin, PalaceGuard008, SchmuckyTheCat

Opposed by Jiang Kirlston

Proposals #2, #3, #11, #12, and #13 each have 2 votes in favor. #11 has three votes against, so lets drop that one.

Proposal #2 and #13 are very similar, perhaps identical. When combined they get 3 votes. I think #13 is probably the more acceptable but Bathrobe, as the person who supposed #2 and was silent on #13, will need to confirm. #2 China is the PRC #13 Searching for "China" redirects user to PRC page. Current article is renamed to "Chinese Civilization"


Proposal #3 was one of PalaceGuard008's 4 suggestions. But his statement about it "and everyone goes home" leaves me wondering how strongly he felt. #3 China links to disambiguation page.

Proposal #12 had a companion, 12a. If I understand them correctly, the point of both 12 and 12a is that we would have a Chinese Civilization page and another China page. In #12, current article becomes Chinese Civilization and another page is made for China. In #12a, current article remains China and a new page is made for Chinese Civilization. #12 Rename this page to "Chinese Civilization. Replace this page with "China is a country..."


Based on all this, I think it really comes down to #12 or #13. Readin (talk) 19:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Instead of re-arguing it, does anyone know if any Wiki policies apply? Readin (talk) 19:45, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Another point: We are trying to reach consensus. Consensus cannot be reach if stubbornly sticks to a single idea that they think everyone else should join. You can have a favorite, but to be helpful you should have a couple alternates that you can live with even if they aren't what you consider perfect.

Contributors and how many proposals they are supporting: Readin 4 Bathrobe 1 Jiang 1 PalaceGuard008 4 Keerlston 2 SchmuckyTheCat 2 Readin (talk) 19:49, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Your post is an accurate summary of my preferences. As you inferred, I don't relaly like the idea of directing "China" to a dismabiguation page. However, in the absence of consensus, I believe this is the solution of least objection. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:15, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Since the above conversation was tl;dr to participate in, I'll say I support #2 and #13 given this summary. #3 and #5 makes me want to vomit. The rest I'd weakly oppose as being wishy-washy. I don't even understand #12, maybe I'll go read some of that 150k of discussion, but if I can't understand the nutshell...
SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
1-10 are ancient history really - not very conducive to understanding to mix ancient history with current.--Keerllston 12:13, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Why someone delete my comment with an "enough of this" comment? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AChina&diff=177905271&oldid=177904768 --Qaicruvau (talk) 17:02, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Ummm... system is wrong! Proposals 1-10 were related to the first sentence - proposals 11, 12, (13???) relate to current discussion. Related discussions but different. - I have no idea what proposal 13 is - why not make a proposal in area of proposals and then note supports/opposes for that one? Is 13 disambiguation???--Keerllston 12:13, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll clarify that on #13, the current page becomes "Chinese Civilization", which I guess I was assuming and forgot to write. I've also updated other information above based on discussion. The reason I didn't add 13 to the earlier list of proposals was that I wanted to focus our efforts on proposals that had received support. The list way up there is full of discussion. We've made our points, now we need to make decisions. One thing that is clear from the discussions is that no one is happy with the page the way it is.
I didn't write the original #12, but looking at it I have to agree with Smuckycat; it doesn't make sense. Given that it is one of the frontrunners, someone should understand it. Can someone who understands it please clarify what it means? Readin (talk) 15:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
I envisaged #12 to be (1) an article on the Chinese civilisation, possibly moved from this article, and (2) a new article on China, possibly recycling material from this article, that calls a spade a spade and talks about China "the country" without any political judgments and accomodating all views as to (a) how many states or political entities comprise China, (b) whether certain territories are in or outside of China, and (c) which if any government represents China.
In other words, move the current article (or at least, an article with something like the current lead) to Chinese civilisation, create a new article that states "China is a country", but then accomodates all the different points of views as to the political, territorial, and governmental issues , in a responsible way in accordance with NPOV.--PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:09, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, can you clarify how #12 would deal with sentences like "Baseball is popular in Taiwan". "Many Tibetans respect the Dalai Lama". "Hong Kong was captured by the Japanese in 1941", if someone were to put them in the "China is a country" article? Readin (talk) 15:26, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
This sounds like a nice theoretical compromise, but I'm not sure it is workable. It's not a mainstream view, it's a Wikipedia solution to a Wikipedia problem. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Note: I oppose 13 per the following.
This page is similar to the pages on Ireland and Korea where there has been a division - the two sides of a conflict over the direction of the country - which still continues today.
ROC and PROC are the ones of this conflict.
China is a civilization was the perceived solution to this problem (in the other two it is "geographical area"/island/-
Oh and wikipedia is not a democracy

oh and a disambiguation page (helps in no way and) would not change whether this page should exist and would just push the proper treatment of this page into the future
--Keerllston 16:21, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

In the interest of preventing this section becoming too cluttered, I'll respond the Ireland and Korea comparisons under the "Proposal 13" section you created.

You are right this isn't a democracy. Good thing too. One one hand, we would have a decision by now, which would be a good thing. On the other hand, 5 billion Chinese (PRC) would be enough to ensure that one POV outshone all others. Readin (talk) 17:43, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

My objection all along is that any encyclopedia should have a page on China. When we turn this into a disambiguation page or a redirect, then we no longer have a page simply on China. The links headed towards here show that references to "China" are not always as specific as the proposals make them out to be. This was the same problem a couple years back when they tried to make Yugoslavia a disambiguation page. It did not work, because references were not always time or political entity-specific. As a result, we decided to fill the page with content. It's not going to work here either and will force us to undo what we have done sooner or later.

I'm not opposed to having this page focus on "Chinese civilization" (and none of the proposals above cover this point) but renaming it to reflect this is totally unnecessary.--Jiang (talk) 19:42, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

To illustrate my point, here are the first couple links in context I picked up:

  • "-metal and jade-inlaid pot. Qianlong reign in the Qing dynasty of China (c. 1700)"
  • "Kites were the first kind of aircraft to fly, and were invented in China around 500 BC."

In both these instances, replacing "China" with "Chinese civilization" would be overkill, and would make the sentence sound ridiculous. People use "China", much more so than "Chinese civilization":

--Jiang (talk) 19:48, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Jiang.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 21:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
A rename of this article would not change the text of other articles. The problem is that the article that exists here is not "China". SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
Regardless of what we do, if people just link to "China" without making sure they know what they are linking to, there will be trouble. If someone refers to the the President of China, Hu Jintao, we'll have the same problem. Regardless of what we do we can't go back and fix everyones links for them. Those fixes will just have to depend on whoever is maintaining those articles when the discover their links aren't right. Your sentences will just need to change to
if that's where you want the page to go without getting interrupting the flow of the sentence. Readin (talk) 23:06, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
China is the official name of the country before 1911. PRC is the official name of today's country. Benjwong (talk) 23:34, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
The need to pipelink shows that renaming the article is wholly unnecessary. We are going from a common, accurate name from a less common, less accurate name.
The official name before 1911 was Great Qing. That is covered by Qing Dynasty. And before that, Great Ming. Unlike Japan, the name of the political entity has never been officially "China". But we use the phrase to refer to the land and people going back thousands of years, as anachronistic as it may be. So renaming isn't helping any.
The current setup is so well ingrained that I don't think they're many bad links.--Jiang (talk) 00:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
"the name of the political entity has never been officially "China". But we use the phrase to refer to the land and people going back thousands of years, as anachronistic as it may be. So renaming isn't helping any."
No, that is exactly why renaming is appropriate. Wikipedia uses common names. For the last several hundred years, native English speakers know where you are talking about when you say "China" no matter what the regime is. In fact, most English speakers don't know and don't care about the internal various regimes and their official names. That is why this article, China, not being on the country currently commonly referred to in English as "China" is a problem. It isn't anachronistic at all, it is, and has been, a stable and common name for "that really big country in Asia." SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
I agree with Schmucky that we should define "China = country" because that is the common usage. The same cannot be said of Korea, and not always with Ireland. But my view is that China should not redirect to the PRC, because there are many perspectives on what "China" is, and many people would not equate China with the PRC despite the common and prevalent usage. Which is why my proposal 12 seeks to create a new article (or recycle material from the current one) about the country "China", without equating it to the PRC, and while accomodating the various perspectives on what should be in or out of China and which is the recognised government of China. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Schmucky that the article called "China" should be about "that really big country in Asia" that English speakers have been calling China for hundreds of years. But that is what it's about now, isn't it, if you ignore the disclaimer and the lead? So I'd propose: leave the article alone, except for removing the disclaimer and fixing the lead. Kanguole (talk) 10:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
And I would agree with that too. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
May I interpret this as support for 12a?--Keerllston 14:20, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
But the current article isn't just about "that really big country in Asia that English speakers have been calling China for hundreds of years". It's also about that small country off the coast that used to be called "Formosa" and is now called "Taiwan". As we discussed, the article can talk about the fact that some areas, like Taiwan, are disputed. But we still are stuck with questions about whether to include the section on Baseball's popularity in Taiwan. Do we include links to Sports in Taiwan? And then what about Tibet? If "that really big country in Asia" isn't the PRC, then how does Tibet get covered? I don't object to the idea that "China is a country". But unless we're clear on what country China is, we don't have any basis for including or leaving out certain areas. We'll have to go right back to arguing about which map to use. Oh, and we'll have to argue about what "country" means too. We need a solution that serves to help us resolve disputes. We don't need a decision that revives the same old disputes while adding even more confusion. Readin (talk) 15:15, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
My view is that "China is a country" should not be negotiable because that is the most common and natural meaning and which we can back up with numerous sources.
As to what country that is: I feel it would be original research for us to pronounce right here right now what bits of land constitute China, precisely because there are so many points of views on it. All significant points of views would be covered by the article. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:43, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
It isn't original research to call the PRC as China. Wikipedia:Naming conflict makes it pretty clear. Common usage of China is not referring to the RoC. Official usage of China is referring to the PRC. China is what the PRC calls itself in English. It certainly is not our job to declare any bit of disputed land as part of China, or the PRC, or anyone else. We simply state claims and properly attribute them as claims. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
I agree with you about claims. But actually, "official usage" is not to equate China = PRC even in the PRC itself. Have a look at the Anti-Secession Law - it clearly differentiates between the concepts of "China", which, under the PRC government's conception, includes both the territories administered by the PRC and that by the ROC, and "the State", i.e. the PRC.
The PRC's official position, as it likes to repeat at every occasion, is that there is one China which is indivisible, and that the PRC is the legitimate government representing that single sovereignty. It does not equate China with the PRC. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:31, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you that the 'official' position is not as important as common usage. But it is clear that in English the common meaning for China is the PRC. What the Chinese speaking PRC says about Zhongguo isn't relevant. Even what they they claim is China in English isn't as important as the common usage of China in English. Readin (talk) 19:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Great Ming, Great Qing is the dynastic name or the dominant government name at the time. Just look at an actual Great Tang text like Great Tang Records on the Western Regions. Even when the book itself is called "Great Tang", you can search for the word "中國" and it comes up multiple times. Do you guys have evidence to prove the name of the country before 1911 was not China? Benjwong (talk) 16:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
The name of the state was 大清國. "China" had multiple terms, 支那 being one of them. None of these terms were official. As far as the Qing authorities were concerned, the name of their state was 清.
中國 appears in the classics, but we know that in Warring States China, it did not mean nation-state. Chu (楚) was not considered part of 中國.--Jiang (talk) 21:44, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Terms: "Nation", "State", and "Country"

From Translation of Ernest Renan's "What is a Nation"

“ I intend to analyze with you an idea which seems simple and clear but which lends itself to the most dangerous misunderstandings. . . . In our day one commits a serious error: one confounds nation and race, and one attributes to ethnographical or rather linguistic groups a sovereignty analogous to that of real peoples. Let us try for some precision in these difficult questions where the slightest confusion about the meaning of words, which are at the basis of our reasoning, can produce the most disastrous errors. ”

The idea of nation is new. Naming China a "country" does not change that - Geographical Area, a People, a Government (or more than one of any of these) - Neither the PRC nor the ROC are simply governments but are also territories and people. Let's try not to make "disastrous errors".--Keerllston 19:16, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems that your source is saying that the "disasterous errors" come from not being precise in the usage of language and by getting government, language, culture, and race confused with each other. That confusion is exactly what we would be doing by making this article about the "country" without being clear on what we mean by "country", or if we were to make the article about a bunch of different ideas like race, culture, civilization, governments, etc.. Readin (talk) 19:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

We cannot define something that is indefined in common usage. It is like trying to define God. Do we mean the Christian God, the Jewish God, the Muslim God, the Hindu God, the flying spaghetti monster God? Oh no! They're too many of them. Let's make God into a disambiguation page! In fact, God deserves to be made into a disambiguation page more than China, because many of these Gods are actually mutually exclusive, while many of these Chinas are not.

We call China a country and no one disagrees. We try to define it and people do. So we have to field these meanings on the page re disputed territories and governments. Start listing 'em.--Jiang (talk) 21:44, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

So when we all agree that China is a "country", apparently we're not agreeing at all. I'm agreeing that China is a country called the People's Republic of China, where "country" means "a political state or nation or its territory". Now if you agree with me that China is such a country, then we can have searches for "China" link to the PRC page. Otherwise, we're not actually agreeing. "China" has multiple meanings. "Country" has multiple meanings. Trying to solve our impasse with one set of meanings by adding the confusion of another word with multiple means is adding fuel to our unproductive fire. Readin (talk) 01:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Naming conflict

Proper nouns

The three key principles are:

  • The most common use of a name takes precedence;
  • If the common name conflicts with the official name, use the common name except for conflicting scientific names;
  • If neither the common name nor the official name is prevalent, use the name (or a translation thereof) that the subject uses to describe itself or themselves.

SchmuckyTheCat is right. It is very clear. The most common use of the name "China" should take precedence. The most common usage is as the name for the PRC. The second most common usage is in historical contexts to refer to the predominately Han governments that preceded the PRC in approximately the same territory and the regions and people's controlled by those governments. One could argue that the PRC is a successor to those governments so that they can be covered in the same article, which is sensible. Readin (talk) 01:48, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Somalia is overrun with warlords. This doesn't mean we have to stop calling it a country. We (everyone) are agreeing that it is a country and disagreeing on the specifics of this country. That is still agreeing to something - China is not a dish of spaghetti. China is a country that is not fully reunited (Anti-Secession Law). Is this an acceptable answer?
I addressed STC's point at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)#China rename attempt still going on???:
I think STC points out a contradiction in the naming conventions between the "use common names" rule and the "avoid ambiguity" rule that is not sufficiently addressed by Wikipedia:Naming conflict.
Be precise when necessary; don't title articles ambiguously when the title has other meanings.
As stated above with my example of the CIA world factbook being inconsistent, there is ambiguity involved with the term "China". While China often means PRC, it also means mainland China or what the PRC claims to be the PRC (note these are likely extremes). Moreover, Wikipedia:Naming conflict calls for disambiguation to be used when "A name used by one entity may well clash with a name used by another entity." This implies that there is sanction for separate articles. So whether some other country also calls itself China is not irrelevant. And whether there are other things named China (like pottery) is also not irrelevant. As stated, when ambiguity persists, we can only determine things on a case-by-case basis.--Jiang (talk) 02:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
China is not Somalia.
The Anti-secession law is irrelevant. We're discussing the common meaning of the English language term "China", not the PRC's self-serving definition.
Your point about not titling articles ambiguously when the title has other meanings suggests that no article should be titled "China". That's ok with me too. A "China" link can go to a disambiguation page. Or it can go to the PRC article and the PRC article can be titled unambiguously "People's Republic of China".
The CIA fact book serves a particular niche of government. But in fact their "China" article is about just the PRC. A more reliable indicator of common usage is newspaper and magazine articles. I just did a search of Yahoo News for "China" and all 10 hits on the first page were about the PRC. I did the same search on Google News and again all ten hits on the first page were about the PRC. Readin (talk) 05:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
To reply to the earlier statement. Saying Qing is the official name of the country is like saying mainland is the official name of today's country, because that's the most common name used. Secondly these google searches will always show PRC as the first 100 hits. Is not like Qing dynasty had internet presence. And yes I agree the anti-secession law is irrelevant. Benjwong (talk) 05:51, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Qing was official. (see [2], [3]) We can't speak of a "common name" because the Westphalian concept of nation and state was not in place until after the Opium Wars.--Jiang (talk) 06:30, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
My reasons for citing the law and the factbook is to illustrate that (respectively) 1) even the PRC government would not object to a catch-all definition of China, contrary to what STC is claiming and 2) the term "China" is inherently ambiguous as the Factbook uses it to mean different things in different articles.
The news media uses "China" to refer to the Central People's Government (politically) and Mainland China (geographically). The Factbook is not consistent. There are contexts beyond the news (ie academia) in which the term China is used. As far as I have been experienced in academia, "China" is used less frequently than "PRC" to refer to the PRC.
Nowhere in the policy does it suggest that topics with inherent ambiguity (read: competing definitions) need to be made into a disambiguation page. In fact, policy expressly prohibits it as content forking. In referencing "don't title articles ambiguously when the title has other meanings", the precise term is "People's Republic of China"; the less precise term is "China". "China" has other meanings that "People's Republic of China"--Jiang (talk) 06:30, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
So Jiang, it sounds like you're solidly in favor of not having an article titled "China" because "China" is an ambiguous term. It also sounds like you are solidly against a disambiguation page. But what should a person find if they link to "China"? Some of us are suggesting the PRC. Others have suggested an article titled "Chinese Civilization". Readin (talk) 14:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
No, I'm solidly in favor of not not having an article titles "China". This page should be on all the definitions and aspects of China - everything. Summary style should be used to avoid details.--Jiang (talk) 18:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

hmmm... So -"People's Republic of China" is often referred to as "China" but "China" is not often referred to as "People's Republic of China" and in addition "China" is not properly defined as "People's Republic of China"? I think I this is reasonable.--Keerllston 12:41, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe 12a is most acceptable to all parties - and we continue the debate about whether China is a country or more than one, a nation or more than one, an ethnicity or more than one, and how we should phrase this in the article as part of this article's duty to define China--Keerllston 12:55, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

12a is only acceptable to all parties if those parties if they enjoy the edit wars that will inevitably result unless someone can provide a good answer to some basic questions.
  • Does the article include the sentence "Baseball is popular in Taiwan."?
  • Does the article include the sentence "Many followers of the Dalai Lama live in Tibet."?
  • Does the article include the sentence "The Japanese captured Hong Kong in 1941."?
  • Does the article include the sentence "Xinjiang is majority Muslim."?
  • Does the article include the sentence "The earliest people in Manchuria are thought to have immigrated there from ..." (that is, does the article talk about pre-Qing Manchuria)?
It's easy to say we'll talk about disputes in the introduction, or in even in a whole section devoted to the disputes. But that doesn't solve the problem of making maps or deciding what goes into the article. I for one do not like edit wars and 12/12a is one of the few suggestions so far that I have opposed, and I very strongly oppose it. I oppose any suggestion that leaves us worse off than where we began. Readin (talk) 14:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
We don't need precise definitions to answer these questions. We can apply PalaceGuard's "man on the Clapham omnibus" test: would an educated English speaker expect to find these topics in an article called "China"? Or, do they fit within the common English usage of "China"? no, yes, possibly, yes and no. If someone gets different answers (except for the middle one), they're probably using a different criterion.
Of course there are disputes and controversial issues, but these should be addressed in detail in the body of the article. There isn't room to do them justice in the lead. Kanguole (talk) 17:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
No, this doesn't say much, possibly, Yes, and what does this mean. Not because these are irrelevant, but because this should be a general overview article using Summary style and should not go into such detail. We can't try to avoid controversial topics by making them into disambiguation pages or redirecting them to specific points of view. That is called Content forking and is not allowed.--Jiang (talk) 18:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
The Content forking occurred when someone created a "China" article to be separate from the "PRC" article, presumably so they could push their few that China currently consists of more than just the PRC. And you are right, that is not allowed. So again you are making a very effective argument for either not having a "China" article or for renaming the PRC article to "China". Readin (talk) 18:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
The view that China "currently consists of more than just the PRC" is one that must be represented for NPOV. There's a difference between having a China article endorse a specific view of "China" and having a China article that discusses the multiple views of China. "The generally accepted policy is that all facts and major Points of View on a certain subject should be treated in one article." PRC is more specific than China so it falls in line with "Summary style" articles and Related articles. "China" is a single subject. Trying to create a disambiguation page out of simply because "contributors disagree about the content of an article" is to invite content forking.--Jiang (talk) 19:30, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
The less common usage of "China" where China is more than just the PRC can't be covered in the PRC article? Surely the PRC article is just as able to present multiple POVs as any other article. That would be the correct way to avoiding POV forking. For Summary Style, you need to have something to summarize. Without embracing the far less common usage/POV of "China" where contemporary China is more than the PRC, what should an article about China cover that wouldn't be in an article about the PRC? History of China is about it, and it is quite common for articles about modern states to also delve into the history that occurred in the territory before the modern state was founded. Readin (talk) 22:00, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
That would only work if we moved all the PRC content to this page, since the general content cannot be moved to a page with a more specific title, a title under which the general content does not belong. But at what cost and what benefit? The current setup is not POV forking because we are placing all the PRC content, appropriately, under "People's Republic of China." POV forking would be having multiple China articles, one defining China as the PRC, and the other not defining China as the PRC. The PRC article does not define China; it defines the PRC.
I wouldn't call it the "less common usage" of "China". Whether the PRC is relevant is context dependent. It often is; it often is not. There's much more to China than news articles. A JSTOR search would suggest plenty of references to China in which the PRC would be irrelevant.
What should the article cover? What's wrong with what the article is covering now? There's little overlap with History of China.
I understand it is common practice to place states under common names, but there are exceptions: Ireland, Korea, and Macedonia.--Jiang (talk) 03:15, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I think that's a good summary. What people mean by "China" in common usage really depends on context. In the context of (mainland) China vs Taiwan, "China" alone would almost certainly mean the PRC government/territories. In the context of economies, we often hear about "China, Hong Kong, Taiwan", sometimes all of them identified as "countries" - in this context, "China" obviously refers to mainland China only. In some contexts, "China" refers to the nation - including both Hong Kong and Taiwan. In rarer contexts, it might even refer to the ROC exclusively, as when the Holy See refers to China.
Readin, we all agree "China is a country", and I think that's enough to make an article. Whether China = PRC depends on which point of view one subscribes one - it is certainly a significant point of view, but not, as I hope I illustrated, the dominantly prevalent one. That's why I think there still needs to be a "China is a country" article separate from the PRC article, but which emphasises that common view point that China = PRC and appropriately links to it. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

There is no doubt there are many usages for the term "China". Sometimes it even refers to dishes. That doesn't mean we should include dishes in the article. "China is a country and a type of dishware" would be only slightly more silly than "China is a country" as the basis for an article.

Saying we all agree "China is a country" is like saying we all agree "Richard is a boxer" when half of us think he punches people and the other half think he puts things in boxes. I've said numerous times that the definition of "country" is problematic and no one has volunteered to solve it. If you're afraid to even tell me what you mean by "country", how can you claim that a "country" is what China is? How can the sentence "China is a country" mean anything at all to you or anyone else if you don't know what a "country" is?

The way to handle a situation like "China" where a name has several distinct common meanings is to either choose the most common meaning for the main page with disambiguation links at top of article, or to simply link to a disambiguation page. See Wikipedia:Naming_conflict. Also, from same page,

Nevertheless, some degree of standardisation of terms is required for practical and technical reasons. This page suggests an effective and efficient method as to how to resolve naming disputes within the bounds of the NPOV policy. Some may find this method to be unacceptable, but it is beneficial for all of us to stick to a uniform way of choosing an article title. An agreed set of group rules can help to determine naming practices in a consistent and fair fashion.
Equally, the prospects for achieving long-term consensus can be complicated by the fact that contributors change over time. At one point, a certain group of contributors may agree to use one name, but this group only represents the view of the particular sub-community of editors that exists at that time. When new contributors arrive, they are faced with the choice of reopening the discussion (thus diminishing the weight of the opinions of their predecessors), or sticking to the old consensus (which deprives the new contributors of a chance to have their say). In short, no consensus represents the voices of all the contributors to a given article. Following a permanently established objective procedure that does not rely on a fleeting consensus gets around this problem.

Readin (talk) 14:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Your comparison to porcelain is a false analogy. "Country" is a word with definitional ambiguity at the boundaries: i.e. there are ambiguous cases about what falls within the deifnition of "country" and what falls outside.
"china", by contrast, is a word with two definitions: "China" the country (though capitalised in this sense) and "china" the material (but not capitalised in this sense).
The two are not the same.
What we understand by "country" is all largely uniform: a country is a roughly definable territory populated by a roughly definable group of people united by some kind of description. We may disagree in this particular instance about what bits are in China and what bits are not, but that does not mean the word "country" itself is subject to disagreement. This is a practical difficulty of classficiation, and not a conceptual one.
Because it is a practical difficulty of classification and not a conceptual one, I put it to you that the same difficulty will arise no matter which word you want to use. If you say "China is a state..." there will be ambiguities about whether, say, Taiwan is a part of that state, whether the disputed territories on the Indian border is part of that state, etc.
Yes, country is a word attended by ambiguity, but it has a common if fuzzy meaning and it is the most common descriptor most people would ascribe to "China" (not "china"). Wikipedia is not a law textbook. Striving for false precision only leads to error.
That the word "country" has a definite if fuzzy meaning is attested to by the fact that England, for example, is always called a "country". What does "country" mean in this case? It's difficult to define with precision, but everyone know what it means: it is not an independent state, but it has a definite territory and a definite population, and can be identified with certain definitional criteria. If we can talk about England the country, then so can we talk about China the country.
Your objection is that we disagree on what is in or out of the country of China. That is not an objection to describing China as a country.
I see no objection in your argument against describing China as a country. But my answer to that argument is that we should address all alternative views of what comprises China in the China article. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Actually, when I'm trying to be precise when talking to people, to let them really understand China, I don't use the word "country" because they may use the definition you use "a country is a roughly definable territory populated by a roughly definable group of people united by some kind of description" in which they consider part of that unity to be language and culture. So I more accurately describe China as an empire. That would be a better alternative and would capture both historical and current usages of the term. Readin (talk) 15:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
... Are you serious or was that a joke? There hasn't been an empire of "China" for almost 100 years, but most people would recognise China as still existing. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:26, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
It was only a joke to the extent that I know a lot of Chinese people have a very negative view of "empire" and therefore using "China is an empire" would never get consensus. But "empire" is the correct word for China, and it isn't necessarily a negative term. Just because the former dynasty was replaced and the newer dynasty doesn't like the word "empire" doesn't mean it isn't an empire: (definition 1a) a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority;. Readin (talk) 16:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
The politically incorrect (but historically valid) way to say it is "China is an empire masquerading as a nation." --Jiang (talk) 18:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I am entirely against 12a. Chinese civilization should link to Culture of China or at least History of China. Just as Roman civilization does not point to Rome the country. I think the civilization term is only being used temporarily because there is no real solution. Benjwong (talk) 16:14, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
PalaceGuard, you make a point about "England" being a country with everyone agreeing to it, and to back up that point you defined "country" as "has a definite territory and a definite population, and can be identified with certain definitional criteria" You're still a little unclear on what you mean by "certain definitional criteria", but you're miles ahead of where you are on defining "country" for China. I don't think we all agree on what the "definite territory and definite population" consist of for China, or even that such a definition exists. Readin (talk) 19:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
These names are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they go from more specific to more general. "Muhammed Ali was a boxer" is not any more specific that "China is a country". Neither statement does into further detail.
We cannot create specificity that does not exist in the real world. You'll find soon enough trying to fix all those links headed to this page as we found trying to make Yugoslavia into a disambiguation page. This solution to any perceived ambiguity is not to pick a side. It is to mention them all. We did not make God focus on the Christian definition of God because Christians probably form a plurality on the English Wikipedia over other religions.--Jiang (talk) 18:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
but you're miles ahead of where you are on defining "country" for China. I don't get what you mean by "defining country for China". You define what a country is, and if China fits in that criterion, it is a country.
But it is not our job to go around defining what a country is, or even whether China is a country. If China is commonly described as a country in reliable sources (which it is), then that's the end of the matter. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 08:09, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I think we should be clear in our minds that there are two questions here: 1. What is China? A country? state? blah? Should we focus on only one of these in this article, or should we cover a range of things? 2. What is included in the concept of China? This is where we decide whether Tibet/Taiwan/Hong Kong/Korea/Vietnam should be included in this article, and to what extent. It may be that we decide on this second question that China includes only the PRC, or we may decide instead that we should present all the alternative views to this question.
I don't think it helps to confuse the two questions. My answers to them, respectively, are (1) it is a country, and (2) its contents vary depend on the context and the speaker, and we should cover all significant points of view. If I understand correctly, Readin agrees with me on Question 1 but disagrees on Question 2. Is that correct? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
This is where we decide whether Tibet/Taiwan/Hong Kong/Korea/Vietnam should be included in this article, and to what extent. It may be that we decide on this second question that China includes only the PRC, or we may decide instead that we should present all the alternative views to this question. But you once you cover all views on whether Tibet/Taiwan/Hong Kong/Korea/Vietnam should be included in the article, you still have to decide whether to include them in the article. Saying you're going to cover all views doesn't do anything to help you decide.
It is not our job to define country, but it is our job to use language unambiguously so that it conveys information. We are not diplomats, we are providers of information. If the use of the word "country" does not convey useful information, why should it be in the article?
What reliable sources do you have that say "China is a country". Note first that given the diplomatic situation, government entities, regardless of which country they are from, generally cannot be considered reliable sources on this particular question. I've already pointed out that I can go to either Google News or Yahoo News and immediately come up with a dozen reliable sources using China to be only the PRC. Those news organizations are less influenced by the need to be diplomatic and so are more reliable on this question. Readin (talk) 14:54, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I cannot agree with you that government sources are not reliable sources. You are confusing the question of neutrality with the question of reliable sources. Wikipedia is not built on "neutral" sources: it aims for NPOV by presenting all significant points of view. This means that, in the usual situation, all sources are non-neutral but in the aggregate, we present a relatively neutral article, i.e. NPOV.
If you think government sources are non-neutral, you should balance it with other sources.
For the question of whether "China is a country", it doesn't matter whether you think China = PRC or not. That goes to the second question. Can we first establish the lack of major objections to the statement that "China is a country" for the purposes of this article? Note that I am not asking what you think that country consists of. We may well decide that that country is the PRC - although I don't think that is likely because of the NPOV policy which requires the due presentation of all significant points of view. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
First, the diplomatic position of many countries isn't a problem because it is POV, it is a problem because there is no reason to believe it represents their their POV. The governments are more unreliable than they are biased.
Here are some well known statements on diplomacy,
"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!' till you can find a rock." -Wynn Catlin
"I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth, and they never believe me." - Di Cavour
"DIPLOMACY, n. Lying in state, or the patriotic art of lying for one's country." - Ambrose Bierce
"Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooden iron." - Joseph Stalin
What reliable source do you have to tell you that the diplomatic statements of a nation are a reliable source for anything?
Second, the only way we can establish that we agree that "China is a country" is if we first can agree to what we mean by "country". Otherwise we might as well all agree that "China is a kaiblic", with each of us of course having our own definition of the word "kaiblic". Readin (talk) 22:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
First, I don't understand why you say government statements are unreliable. Is it an inherent suspicion of governments on your behalf? Or is it based on some solid evidence, for example reliable sources, that say that all government statements about China are unreliable? You have already expressed your suspicion of the United Nations and the international law, positions which I do not believ eyou have adequately backed up. Quotes, however pithy, are not helpful here.
Second, no we don't! If reliable sources describe China as a country, and we can decide that the scope of this article is about the geographical sense of China rather than, say, the ethnic or cultural sense, then that's what we say in this article. There is no need for us to agree on our personal interpretation of the word "country", because our personal interpretations are OR and count for nought. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:57, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
First, you haven't provided any reliable sources to say that diplomatic or government statements related to diplomatic issues are reliable. Pithy quotes may not be "reliable", but they generally come from some recognized truth. They may not be much, but they are more than has been provided in rebuttal.
Second, you haven't provided any reliable sources saying "China is a country." If you provide such sources, we can look at what those sources mean when they say "country". If the sources are clear enough to provide useful information, and if they are in agreement, then you'll have something. I've shown I can quickly put together a bunch of sources for China=PRC. Until someone can do the same for another view, it seems both Wikipedian Naming Conventions and Wikipedia reliable sources policies are very clear. Readin (talk) 15:02, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

What are the following terms and how do they relate to the definition of China? PRC, ROC, Autonomous Regions, Administrative Zones, Tibet, Xianjiang, Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, China proper, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Zhonghua minzu, Vietnam, Korea, Japan...--Keerllston 15:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Need source

{{editprotect}} I would like to have some sources for the following from the original editor. So change the following

The "official" orthodox faith system held by most dynasties of China until the overthrow of the last dynasty is a panentheism system, centering on the worship of "Heaven" as an omnipotent force.

to

The "official" orthodox faith system held by most dynasties of China until the overthrow of the last dynasty is a panentheism system, centering on the worship of "Heaven" as an omnipotent force.{{fact}} --Qaicruvau (talk) 19:04, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
Done. Od Mishehu 07:11, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

An edit

{{editprotect}} Most Chinese dynasties were based in the historical heartlands of China, known as China proper. Various dynasties also expanded into peripheral territories like Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, Xinjiang, and Tibet.

should read

Most Chinese dynasties were based in the historical heartlands of China, known as China proper. Various dynasties also expanded into peripheral territories like Mongolia, Manchuria, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan

According to the history gif, Mongolia and Tibet were both part of China during the Qing and Tang dynasties. The only difference is that Tibet is currently part of China while Mongolia is not. But clearly Mongolia was a region that various dynasties expanded into.

One could argue that Taiwan is part of "China proper" based on language and culture. However, the term "historical heartlands" clearly makes Taiwan not a part of that region. Taiwan was colonized by the Han only a few hundred years ago, and has had an on and off relationship with China like Tibet and Mongolia have. Readin (talk) 20:01, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Please do not reference Wikipedia as misinformation may breed further misinformation. It's hard to define what is "part of China" before the Opium War. We can only compare what was under direct imperial authority and what was not. Taiwan has not had an "on and off relationship with China". Rather, it was not until the early Qing dynasty that it came under direct imperial authority for the first time. The territory was of no relevance before that (definitely not the case for Mongolia). The same can also be said of Yunnan.--Jiang (talk) 21:34, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
the list should be "Mongolia, Manchuria, Xinjiang, Tibet, Korea, and Vietnam"--Jiang (talk) 21:46, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I believe you can add Fujian province to that like because their relationships with the regiemes were on and off as well (...i think...) nat.utoronto 22:48, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
The "historical heartlands" phrase should at least be removed as it is both opinion (what is the "heartland" of China) and of questionable accuracy for many places. Readin (talk) 01:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

How's this? "Most Chinese dynasties were based in the North and Central China and Yangtze plains, an area roughly known as China proper. Various dynasties also expanded into peripheral territories such as present-day Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Vietnam."--Jiang (talk) 03:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Question what is the exception to "most Chinese dynasties"? Is it the dynasties of Tibet, Korea, Mongolia, Japan, etcetera?--Keerllston 20:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I can think of the Jin, the Liao, the Yuan, and the Qing. All of these were founded by non-Han northern (originally) nomadic peoples, and many of them were "based" in the northern steppes or at least partly "based" there - e.g. the Yuan dynasty had twin capitals in Xanadu and Khanbaliq - the former in the Mongolian steppes and the latter (Beijing) on the periphery of China proper. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:10, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
And of course there are a bunch of smaller/shorter-lived "dynasties" from the Sixteen Dynasties, Northern and Southern Dynasties and Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms periods. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:13, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

China is a country

It seems clear to me that according to Wikipedia policies we really should have the "China" page be about the PRC. But I seem to be in the minority in recognizing that. I've been trying to come up with some way to satisfy the "China is a country" desire while providing useful information and giving us some guidance on what to include in the article. Can we open with something like:

The term "China" is commonly used to represent a country in the sense of whatever we mean by "country". Other common usages for the term "China" as a country are give some other usages. All these usages overlap to some degree in that the peoples and geography of those usages overlap. This article describes the the peoples and territories of any and all of those usages. For more detailed descriptions of these usages see China (disambiguation).

The second paragraph can then talk about what states, geographic regions, peoples, etc. are typically considered part of "China" and the controversies surrounding them. Readin (talk) 02:15, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that could accommodate everyone's POV. good job :) nat.utoronto 02:27, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
ShuporTSound good. Defines China! Sounds great.
What we don't want of course is "China is a boolangabob in the sense of that a boolangabob is China" - :D
I think Palaceguard's paragraph "China is a country" should find a place in the article china.
--Kiyarrllston 19:04, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Which paragraph are you suggesting be included somewhere? Readin (talk) 07:29, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
the one from proposal 12--Kiyarrllston 16:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
This one?

"China is a country in East Asia. It is associated with one of the world's oldest continuous civlisations [...] [the following deals with the political situation] Internationally, the People's Republic of China is usually identified as the state representing China; some countries, however, instead recognise the Republic of China as representing China. [...] [the following deals with territorial disputes and secessionist claims] What territories comprise China is a matter of frequent debate. Strong movements in Taiwan advocate either that Taiwan establishes itself as separate from China, or that Taiwan is already separate from China. Other movements advocate for the independence from China of Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. At the same time, various groups, including, officially, the Republic of China government, advocate for recidivist claims to parts of Burma, Russia, the whole of Mongolia, [etc]."

The first sentence would need to change. By itself it is not NPOV. Better would be "China is a country or set of countries in East Asia". "Internationally, the People's Republic of China is usually identified as the state representing China" is wordy and misleading. It should be simplified to "Internationally, the People's Republic of China is usually identified as modern China." How about:

"China is a country or set of countries in East Asia. It is associated with one of the world's oldest continuous civilisations [...] [the following deals with the political situation] Internationally, the People's Republic of China is usually identified with modern China; some countries, however, instead recognise the Republic of China as representing China. [...] [the following deals with territorial disputes, claims that Taiwan is part of China, and Taiwan's de facto independence] What territories comprise China is a matter of frequent debate. Strong movements in Taiwan dispute claims that Taiwan is part of China and advocate that Taiwan formally establish itself as separate from China. Other movements advocate for the independence from China of Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. At the same time, various groups, including, officially, the Republic of China government, advocate for recidivist claims to parts of Burma, Russia, the whole of Mongolia, [etc]."

I realize that the "set of countries" will bother some people, but that is to be expected when we have no agreement about the meaning of the word "country". That's why I think our first line should say "China is a country in the sense that ...". Readin (talk) 18:40, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

What "set of countries" are we referring to? Is there a list? If we are to make this claim, then we will have to clarify it because I don't understand how China can be a "set of countries". "Modern China" is used by historians to refer to the period extending from the Opium War to the present; it cannot be equated with the People's Republic of China, which is a state and not a historical period. As the for remainder of the paragraph, I think the PRC position needs to be somehow represented.--Jiang (talk) 07:18, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Jiang: I'm not aware of a significant point of view that says China is a set of countries. If you are saying that this "set of countries" consists of China, Taiwan, Mongolia, Tibet, or any subset of that list, then it is a confusion between two points of view: those advocating independence for these "countries" would regard them as separate and independent of China; thus China does not include them. They see China as one country, and Taiwan/Mongolia/Tibet as another country. Those advocating their inclusion in China would see China as one country including these territories. They see China as one country, and Taiwan/Mongolia/Tibet as being included in that country.
You've combined the two points of view of what is broadly described as the Taiwanese independence movement. Some proponents of the movement view Taiwan as already sovereign and independent, while others advocate that Taiwan should become sovereign and independent. The two views are mutually exclusive, so Strong movements in Taiwan dispute claims that Taiwan is part of China and advocate that Taiwan formally establish itself as separate from China. is not logically correct.
Just my two cents - I'm happy to see discussion progressing along and flattered that you guys are finding my proposal useful. I'll check back from time to time. Happy new year to all. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 14:07, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
"Modern China" should perhaps be changed to "current China" or some other term that will placate those who don't wish to see China treated like other old countries (like France, Germany, etc.) whose histories are generally considered part of the history of the current state. That is, we need wording to placate those who would be offended by "the People's Republic of China is usually identified with China" because they would say China is older than the PRC.
I'm not specifying the "set of countries" in the first sentence because it is controversial. I added it so that we avoid adopting a POV. That has to be covered in the section [the following deals with the political situation]. The countries, or supposed countries depending on your view, that will need coverage are PRC, ROC/Taiwan, Mongolia, and Tibet. That is, unless we can agree on what we mean by "country", specify that meaning in the article, and thereby clarify what "country or set of countries" we mean by "China".
As for the idea that because those who believe certain areas are separate from China would still consider China one country means that China is one country, there are two problems. First, one can believe Tibet is a separate country and also believe that it is currently part of China because China occupies it. One can also believe Mongolia is still officially part of the ROC and still recognize that Mongolia is de facto independent. Secondly, and more importantly, there is a significant view that there are "two Chinas", the ROC and PRC.
"Strong movements in Taiwan dispute claims that Taiwan is part of China and advocate that Taiwan formally establish itself as separate from China." is logically correct. You ignored the word "formally". Many of those who believe Taiwan is already independent still want a formal declaration of what is already true in the form of renaming the country and legally relinquishing claims to territories of China. You are correct that there are others who do not believe Taiwan is independent and wish it become so. I had difficulty finding wording that would concisely cover both views. Readin (talk) 16:32, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Protection, again

Nat, a sockpuppet war should not keep this article protected. Vigilance by all users will take care of the reverting. Having a steady supply of administrators willing to block on site for these socks is the answer. Please unprotect the article. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

The time and effort spent simply on banning the sockpuppet and reverting his changes far exceeds any contributions that are made to this article. I don't see a reason for unprotection. Changes can simply be discussed in the talk page for a major and saturated article like China. Herunar (talk) 14:35, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Clarified wording to say China is applying pressure to recognize only one of Taiwan or Chian. Taiwan no longer applies such pressure.

The previous text that was written leaves a clear impression that it is China's "One-China Policy". There is no mention of a "One-China policy" that is not China's.

Due to the fact that most international, intergovernmental organizations observe the One-China policy of the People's Republic of China,...Due to the One-China policy, states around the world are pressured to recognize either the Republic of China or the People's Republic of China

Consider what happened the last time a state tried to maintain diplomatic relations with both countries. (It's the last time I know of, are there any more recent examples?)

LIBERIA: China cuts relations China severed diplomatic relations with Liberia on Tuesday over Monrovia's decision to maintain diplomatic ties with both Beijing and Taiwan. "The mistaken decision of the Liberian government has seriously damaged China's sovereignty," China's ambassador to Liberia said. A Taiwan government official, quoted by AFP in Taipei, condemned "Beijing's mentality of hegemony" over relations with Liberia. China has reportedly cancelled all bilateral agreements with Liberia. Meanwhile, Taiwan donated 90,000 dollars to Liberia on Wednesday, the day after Beijing severed relations, said AFP. Source: Reuters & AFP.

The ROC didn't protest or demand that Liberia choose one side or the other, only China did. And China was the one to cut diplomatic ties. So we can objectively note that the ROC no longer applies pressure to make countries adhere to a One-China policy by only recognizing one of the two countries. That is, unless someone can cite a more recent example where the ROC tried to pressure a third country not to recognize both China and Taiwan, but only one or the other. Readin (talk) 15:29, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I dunno - this seems like OR unless the ROC government actually comes out and says "we are no longer requiring that other countries recognise only either the ROC government or the PRC government but not both".
I say it is OR because "ROC no longer demands single recognition" is an inference drawn from their actions. Given that this is diplomacy, I don't think such an inference is so self-evident.
For example, when Kiribati recognised the ROC, the PRC did not cut relations until some time later. However, that would not support an inference that the PRC no longer requires singular recognition. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:27, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
The statement describes the effects (nations being pressure) rather than being a restatement of official policy. Kiribati shows again that it was the PRC that cut relations, not the ROC, showing PRC pressure in the form of threatening to cut diplomatic relations. Was there any evidence that the ROC was pressuring Kiribati not to have relations with both PRC and ROC? Did ROC threaten to cut relations? Based on the statement by "a Taiwan government official" in the Liberia case, Taiwan was criticizing China for not being willing to accept simultaneous recognition. If you're going to suggest that Taiwan is applying pressure some documentation will be needed. Readin (talk) 15:54, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't profess to know whether or not Taiwan applies pressure - which is why in my view nothing should be said on the subject without reliable sources. The statement by a "Taiwan government official" is ambiguous about whether Taiwan actually accepts other countries recognising both governments. Yes, that position would be consistent with the general attitude of the DPP government, but on the other hand it is inconsistent with past practices. It is not so self-evident to me - and I think reliable sources are needed.
By the tway, the incident cited does not say the PRC actually "pressuring" anyway. Remember, even though the DPP doesn't emphasise it, the position remains (whether by ROC law or international law) that when a country recognises the ROC government, it is recognising the ROC government as the government of all China. (In case the logic is not clear, the ROC professes officially to be legally the government of all China, including Mongolia. Therefore, for a government to establish diplomatic relations with the ROC, it is recognising the existence of the ROC as a state, and unless there are explicit statements to the contrary, that implies a recognition of the ROC as the state it professes itself to be, i.e. China, including Taiwan and Mongolia.) That implies a withdrawal of recognition of the PRC as the government of China, so whether it is "pressuring" for the PRC to cut relations is debatable.
Just to be clear, my point is that there isn't enough evidence to say either way that "Taiwan no longer 'pressures'" and that "China still 'pressures'". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
PG, it sounds like our positions are compatible. The current article (as I modified it) doesn't say whether or not Taiwan pressures. It says that China pressures countries to not recognize the ROC. I think the fact that the PRC cuts off relations shows a form of pressure. Obviously the country in question (Kiribati or Liberia, as we've discussed) is interested in maintaining relations with China or it would have cut the relations itself, so knowing that it will lose relations with China is a form of pressure. Also, other situations can be considered such as the case of Macedonia where China held up UN assistance in dealing with serious terrorism there because Macedonia recognized the ROC. But until I find someone actually saying "Chinese actions in the UN were a form of pressure on Macedonia because Macedonia recognizes Taiwan", I can see where you would call that reasoning "original research". If you want to remove the comments about the PRC using pressure, I think you have a right to under the policy that everything should be cited. Readin (talk) 22:08, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree with that treatment. I think the statements about the PRC exerting pressure should stay, although more reliable sources in future would be preferrable. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't "China" lead to the country of china? I think this should be "Chinese Civilization". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.43.79.45 (talk) 11:15, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Overwikification

{{editprotected}} The history section of this article is vastly overwikified. Please read Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)#Internal links. There is one paragraph where Republic of China is linked-to 4 times, People's Republic of China is linked to 6 times, and Taiwan is linked to twice — and this in just a single paragraph where all of those links had already been made in preceding paragraphs, multiple times over. Think of the readers' eyes. One link to each per section, at most, please. Uncle G (talk) 18:35, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Could you please make the necessary changes and post the wikitext on pastebin or somewhere else? east.718 at 23:21, January 15, 2008
Request template disabled until code supplied, as per above. Sandstein (talk) 19:25, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Etymology: vassals

{{editprotected}} Section: "Etymology" - "vassels" is not an English word. please change to "vassals". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.108.42.101 (talk • contribs)

Done. Thanks! --Nlu (talk) 16:02, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Prehistory

"Archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest humans in China date to 2.24 million to 250,000 years ago". -- "Humans" should read "hominids", "homo erectus" or "Peking Man", as homo erectus and modern homo sapiens are distinct species. Shawnc (talk) 05:51, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Wrong interwiki to danish wikipedia

{{editprotect|The interwiki link to the danish wikipedia should be changed from "Kina" to "Kina (kulturområde)" as the first one now redirects to The Republic of China. --Broadbeer (talk) 23:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)}}

Y Done nat.utoronto 06:01, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Foods

In many places people have many ways to eat. Well they eat rice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.157.134.54 (talk) 23:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Traditionally, southern China ate rice and rice-based foods, while northern China ate wheat products and other grains. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:16, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

'Economy of China'

The section directs to a 'history' of it, it should go to a more specific zone. --Leladax (talk) 10:32, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Edit request

Declined. No source for claim. feydey (talk) 13:10, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected|Chinese language is not the oldest written language, Hebrew is.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.170.109.104 (talk • contribs) 19:27, February 23, 2008 (UTC)}}

I don't know whether you're right about Hebrew being older, but if you are I'm sure there will be some Chinese who disagree as a matter of pride. To successfully get the page changed you'll need a credible source to back up the claim. Do you have one? Readin (talk) 21:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Hebrew language is a bit difficul to navigage, but it says the first written evidence of "distinct Hebrew" is from the 10th century BC. The Oracle script dates from about 1200-1050 BC.
If there is a reliable osurce that opposes the existing evidence on Wikipedia, please raise it, 129.170, and also add it into the Hebrew language article. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:39, 24 February 2008 (UTC)