Talk:China/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Some peculiarity of wiki coding keep puts the table on the same line with the succeediing text at least in Netscape 4.7. With explorer it is on the same line but overwriting is not as bad as with netscape. Tried different things to avoid that but finally put it at the bottom where there is no succeding text. I don't see any reason to have subsections as a sidebar if that is the intent rather than just a problem.Fred Bauder

I'm sorry Fred, what do you mean by that last sentence? Once again, if you think this is a bug, please report it. Jeronimo

Need to change. This would have been more or less accurate in 1985 but it's not an accurate reflection of the political claims that are being made today.


The name China is claimed by two countries, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China, better known as Taiwan. The People's Republic claims Taiwan is a separatist province, while Taiwan claims independence and the use of the name China. Since the name "China" in English language almost always refers to the People's Republic, that is the topic of this page. See Taiwan and china (porcelain) for more information on those topics and One China policy for more information on the issue surrounding the name China.

At this point, almost no one is making the association ROC == China and almost no one challenges the authority of the PRC to rule mainland China. The controversy is over the following questions.

1) Is Taiwan part of China? 2) Is China synonomous with the PRC? 3) Is Taiwan part of the PRC?

The three answers are

PRC: Yes, Yes, Yes Unificationists on Taiwan: Yes, No, No Independence supporters on Taiwan: No, Yes, No

It gets even more complicated because you can make distinctions between the question of "is" or "should be" and also you can play games with the meaning of the term "China".

Also the government on Taiwan doesn't really have an official position on these three questions and tries to avoid answering them whenever possible. Basically the government on Taiwan has to take into account the opinions of groups 2) and 3) and avoid provoking an invasion from group 1) and its strategy has largely been to not talk about the controversy so the answer to those questions from the Taiwanese government is

1) No comment 2) No comment 3) No.

Also everything might change quickly. I expect that we will have to reedit the pages considerably after the 2004 Presidental elections in Taiwan.

As far as the sub pages. The main information on the PRC's current forces would be under [[People's Liberation Army]]. Military of China could link to PLA and also include information about the ROC military and historical information. Politics of China should probably be renamed Politics of the People's Republic of China while the pages on history, culture, demography can be pointed to History of China, Culture of China etc.


-- User:Roadrunner

Well tried to reorganize the whole thing; probably not that good. All of those links at bottom are not really to PRC but are all redirected to China. Did make bug report on the table. To try again the table is right aligned. The text which on the edit page follows the table tried to squeeze in left aligned next to the table but bleeds over on top of the table. That's with 3 common browsers on two computers. User:Fredbauder

I restored:

China was one of the earliest centers of human civization. Relatively early it became a large united country with an advanced culture.

because I believe it is important and true. China is like if Egypt or Babylon were still around, or Rome. User:Fredbauder

Also restore (but tried to edit some:

- A government with some democratic forms but controlled by the Chinese Communist Party rules.

This is not a complete explanation of how it is both a democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat but it is more or less the situation. User:Fredbauder

The subpages need resolving: they lead to different places, and also if they're to be at People's Republic of China, they should have the apostraphe, and should include "the" before it, e.g. History of the People's Republic of China. Cheers, --KQ

The China article should reflect the general characteristics of Chinese culture, langugage, and history, leaving detailed information on the current regimes to their own articles. Fred Bauder 11:07 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think this page is good enough now to replace China. If others agree I'll make sure to do the move right so that the correct histories are with the right articles (page history of China needs to be moved to People's Republic of China (the current page needs to first be deleted and then restored after the move) and then the page history of China/Temp needs to be moved to China). Our next task will be to check many of the links to China to see if they really intend to go to the PRC, ROC, Taiwan or the pottery. That'll take some time but if we could do the same for football I think we can do this here. --mav 03:23 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

  • I think you should go ahead. Looks good to me. But now that "China" and the "People's Republic of China" have been separated, should the same be done for Taiwan and the Republic of China--have the former discuss culture and history and the latter discuss politics and government?Jiang 23:31 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Hm. That may be more confusing that it is worth; The ROC in English is almost always used to just describe the pre-revolution government of China and Taiwan is used for the current name of the nation by English speakers. But I don't have strong feelings about this and do see your point. --mav

Move complete. --mav