Talk:China Hands

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[edit] Scope of the article?

This is a very useful article, but is there some way to expand the coverage to include journalists or should there be a separate article for the group including THeodore White, Jack Belden etc etc. cwh 18:20, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm familiar with Theodore White, but I'm not sure if I've ever read about them being referenced as China Hands. Though, there certainly were reporters who spent their lives or a considerable amount of time in China, and knew it quite well. If you can find a source that explicitly refers to them as China Hands, we can quite easily just create a section devoted specifically to them in the article. ~ (The Rebel At) ~ 21:04, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


It's a good question whether to limit the term in Wikipedia to make things easier to handle.

Out of curiosity I Googled "China Hands" and got 68,700,000 hits! One of the first was an Ohio State website[1] which quoted A Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, edited by Paul Beale, (Macmillan, 1989 to the effect that the term has been in use since approximately 1910 and is applied to "One who has spent many years in China in the commercial or civil service, or as a missionary."

Peter Rand's book, China Hands (Simon & Schuster 1995 ISBN 06848084470) includes, among others, Edgar Snow, Harold Isaacs, Theodore H. White, and Agnes Smedley. James Lilley's China Hands(2004 ISBN 1586481363) talks about the employees of the Standard Oil Company in the 1920s.

So we could consider just about anybody a China Hand -- not that I think this would be a good idea!

"China Hand" may turn out to be a category, not a single article. Problem is that it could be confused with "Expatriates in China." [[2]]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:China_Hands

What are your thoughts? Cheers cwh 05:24, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Questionable Reasons for Deleting Utley Book

User:RedSpruce deleted *Utley, Freda (1951). The China Story. H. Regnery Co. Noting:replacing old book from low-credibility author publisher with more recent text

This happened within 35 minutes of my making a wikilink to the Freda Utley page. User:RedSpruce's last change to the book on October 31 was just a matter of putting it in a wiki citing format which I removed since I couldn’t find out how to do both a wiki link and that format. User:RedSpruce did not find the book old and low credibility at that point.

Note that I made the change while looking for wiki mentions of Freda Utley because I am just updating her page with more information about her notability, including many internet references to her and links to the text of her books which are online.

I have no problem with adding another publisher. But I do contest removing reference to her book for the following reasons:

  • Re: “Low credibility” of H. Regnery Co., now Regnery Publishing http://www.regnery.com/ It obviously is a leading conservative publisher. Just because it may publish a lot of books neither of us might be too excited about, doesn’t make it any more low-credibility that a lot of other ideological publishers along the left-right or pro-state anti-state spectrums. I assume this isn’t WP:IDONTLIKEIT. (I love that section!!)
  • re: “low credibilty” of Freda Utley:

_ She also traveled in China and Japan in the late 1920s and wrote: Japan's Gamble in China (1938) and China at War (1938) while she was still a communist and after she became anti-Communist Last Chance in China (1948).

- Time Magazine mentioned The China Story and Freda Utley upon its release in 1951 calling her “a seasoned, firsthand observer of China events” http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,859180-1,00.html

- The New York times mentioned a gathering to pay tribute to her ten years after her death. Http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEFDE133FF930A2575AC0A96E948260

- Francis Beckett recently wrote a book about her and three other women called: “Stalin’s British Victims” reviewed here http://www.newstatesman.com/200408160010 And a Beckett story about her life was published in November 2005, in the The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1627409,00.html

- She was called “another recognized authority on the details of this denial of assistance to Chiang Kai-shek” in a foot note here http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/marshfn.html fr Fall, 1967 issue of Rampart Journal, Vol. III, No.3 “Marshall and Vietnam” by C. C. Hiles

- Marxist.Org bothers to keep a letter featuring a story about her: http://www.marxists.org/archive/baracchi/1940/murder-will-out.htm

- She was recently mentioned on a blog: http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2005/11/monstrous-hidden-mao-tse-tung.html

- She was recently mentioned in another book review: http://chinabusinessreview.com/public/9707/books.html

- JSTOR http://links.jstor.org bothers to keep and article on the topic. The China Story. by Freda Utley Author(s) of Review: Scott D. Johnston The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 3 (May, 1952), pp. 389-390

I’m wondering if she ALSO should be linked as “See Also” under China Hands? Other opinions before I replace/update the reference??

Thanks for motivating me to beef up my research! Carol Moore 19:04, 28 November 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc

In general newer books are considered better sources than old books, and even more so, a book on a politically loaded subject from a publisher with an overt political agenda and bias isn't to be considered the best of sources. Such publishers, regardless of the direction of their slant, should always be considered "low reliability" IMO. But considering the notability of Utley and this book that you've documented, I've restored the book listing to the article.
Nice job on the research; I look forward to checking out some of these links. RedSpruce (talk) 19:41, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! And I hadn't even gotten around to the Bertrand Russell praises and those letters(!) from George Bernard Shaw! :-)

Carol Moore 20:46, 28 November 2007 (UTC)User:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc

Later Note: Finishing up changes to Freda Utley and reading this article more carefully again, I realize: oops! Utley was a critic of the state department "China Hands"! They weren't just any body who happened to be an expert on China. (Have to stop just SKIMMING articles!) Anyway, figured since had info on who the other critics of the hands were might as well name them explicitly to improve the article. Also added back Regnery as Original publisher, esp. since there is info about the book in the Regnery Publishing wiki article.
Carol MooreUser:Carolmooredc User talk:Carolmooredc —Preceding comment was added at 17:42, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tendentious and flagrantly counterfactual verbiage

"This view was motivated not by sympathy with communism as a political or economic system, but with the view that Chinese communists were far more popular and militarily effective than the Nationalists. The China Hands felt that the Nationalists were wracked with corruption and incompetence. By contrast, the communists seemed to be much more competent. Communist leaders like Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai were more impressive personalities than the average Nationalist official. Many China Hands felt that America should support the communists as a practical matter, so that the U.S. could work with them if, as many China experts correctly expected, they gained power."

These comments are tendentious and flagrantly counterfactual. For the latest evidence regarding the disloyal associations and activities of the China Hands, especially FSO John S.Service, please consult "Blacklisted by History," by M. Stanton Evans. The documents that have come out in recent years speak for themselves, and you will find them in that book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.52.121.161 (talk) 11:58, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Those comments represent the majority view among scholars. They should be referenced, and some mention of other views should be made, but by no means should the article be edited to reflect the fringe minority views expressed in Evans' book. See the Wikipedia policy described in WP:NPOV#Undue weight. RedSpruce (talk) 14:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)