Talk:China
Probably, most people that want to refer to the country People's Republic of China will link to this page, as China is the name by which it is commonly known. The "PR of" part is usually only added in formal use. As far as I can judge, most of the articles linking to China also intend to link to the PR (or perhaps the "old China") but few or none intend to link to the ROC, which is better known as Taiwan - that article is also located at Taiwan.
I propose to:
- put the PR of China's article at China
- put a redirect at People's Republic of China to China
- put a redirect at Republic of China to Taiwan (it probably already exists)
Jheijmans 07:12 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)
My thought would be that there should be China article which would cover pre-revolutionary China, at the end (and at the beginning too) a short note about the division of the country with links to Taiwan and to Peoples Republic of China. My thinking is not at all based on politics but on the obvious fact that one can write lengthy articles on each of the 3 topics and an additional 3 on the history of each. Although one might make a new topic [[Pre-revolutionary China] but that seems awkward. User:Fredbauder
- I think that is what the article is right now, or at least is supposed to be. However, I think it is rather fair to say that the history of the old China is included with the PR; it can be seen as it's successor. Taiwan will share a part of that history, but not all of it. Splitting up the history (and the rest) of one country because a (small) part of it has become independent (well, that's actually disputed) doesn't seem the way to go to me. Jheijmans
Thought a bit more about this. I think a general china article; then an article on each of the dynasties (and countries included within China such as Manchuria, Tibet, major provinces etc.). And of course a main article on the Peoples Republic of China with sections on such things as the long march, the cultural revolution, etc. The thing I'm thinking about is the size. We simply don't want another 300kb article which is what happens if you jam it all into one place. It won't load in lots of browsers and is hard to edit. I doubt wikipedia has been really discovered on the mainland, but if my experience on the New York Times China Forum is any guide there is a whole bunch of them and they can write volumes, expecially about China. I'm afraid wikipedia can expect a full bouquet of all 100 flowers once they get going. To address the split up of history, like in the case of European colonization of the Americas there is one general article then 4 major articles on British, French and Spanish colonization of the Americas then aricles on each historical region expored or colonized by the Spanish, like Spanish Florida, New Mexico, Texas, Yucatan etc. But there are also modern topics from each of those regions. Given that Chinese opinions diverge widely and also given the custom of making some contemporary point about the modern situation by refering to some obscure historical event a lot of fuss can be expected, its the size not "one China" that is a issue. User:Fredbauder
I propose a disambiguation page linking to:
- China, the country with a history of thousands of years
- People's Republic of China, recent government
- Taiwan (or Republic of China), recent government
Each of the latter two (goverment) articles should mention the claims and counter-claims of legitimacy made by the rival regimes. Ed Poor
I'm not saying everything on China should be jammed in one page. Not even the history has to be jammed in one page. For example, the article on the Netherlands has a very brief history of the country. History of the Netherlands expands on that, mentioned more details, such as the First Anglo-Dutch War. This article in turn describes that war in much more detail, and mentions a number of battles, and a treaty signed in the end. Future articles on those topics can go into the details of that battle or treaty, etc., etc. (just as you pointed out about the colonisation thing).
Getting back to China, the point here is that I and ,I think, most other people would expect to find an article about China at China. And for me that means what is formally called the People's Republic of China. Like I don't expect to find the article on the Netherlands at Kingdom of the Netherlands, with the Netherlands article saying that it is a region in north-west europe, consisting of the current Kingdom of the Netherlands and Belgium, linking to those articles. Jheijmans 10:15 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)
Perhaps the issue is that the name of a country makes a political statement about the legitimacy of the regime that currently rules it. Think about an article called Germany. I would expect something about the current borders and current government, of course, but mostly I'd like to know about the people who live there. Or maybe divided countries are a special case. Anyway, I'm sure you'll make the right decision. Ed Poor
The current organization of these China articles is rubbish! The PR of China should be at the conventional short form for that nation; China. This is how every other nation in wikipedia is, why is this one so different (well, the USofA does need to be moved to its short form too)? Hardly anybody in the world considers Taiwan to be the China except for Taiwanese and a handful of other nations. Therefore there is no reasonable ambiguity here. I wholeheartedly support Jheijmans' proposal and will do the work myself if needed. All we are doing by having this equal split is indicating that Taiwan has an equal claim to the mainland or that there is some significant ambiguity with the use of the word "China" - which there ain't. Sorry folks, even though I despise the government of the PR of China, possession is still nine tenths of the law. --mav
One issue I've forgotten about is the porcelain. I don't think we want a disambiguation page pointing to China (country) and china (porcelain). A page about china porcelain (is that a good term?) could however be linked from the bottom of the China article. Any other suggestions? Jheijmans 00:01 Jul 25, 2002 (PDT)
- No, not at the bottom but at the top in disamgibuation block format. I would suggest China (porcelain) or fine China which I think mean the same thing. --mav
Please please put China the country on the China page, and leave disambiguation for the very bottom. The term is not even close to being ambiguous. Possession is 9/10 of the law, indeed, and "fine China" owns less than 1/10 the usage of that word. --KQ
Possession is indeed 9/10 of the law BUT in wikipedia, we try to be as NPOV as possible. I'm pretty sure there are a diminishing number of hardliners who still think Taiwan is the Republic of China and we sure don't want to incite anger in them. My proposal is a combination of disambiguition-like paragragh followed by the article of the country. The whole page would look like this:
(starting with redirects)
- People's Republic of China and
- Taiwan
- china -- the porcelain
The article accounting the country should be covering both governments.
China the country and china the porcelian don't need a disambiguation. China with the capital "C" is the country and porcelian has the lowercase "c". Nobody would write the country as china and doing so may be considered an insult to Chinese. Similar case in Turkey the country and turkey the bird. A link to the porcelian is good enough. Shame on folks who don't even bother typing the uppercase "C" while writing articles about the country. Ktsquare
- A fair point, except that links are case-insensitive to the first letter. That is, china and China lead to the same page, so that won't help distinguish. My point was simply that I'd really rather not see the country (either country) and the porcelain disambiguated as if those two senses were equally common. --KQ
I now think we should do the following (accumulating my earlier thoughts and some responses):
- Make China the article about the PR
- Put in a notice at the top (disambiguation block format) with "see Taiwan or "Republic of China" (whichever you want) and the porcelain
In this way, almost all of the people linking (or following a link) to China still get what they expect; the rest can easily go the topics of Taiwan or porcelain. Jeronimo 03:45 Jul 26, 2002 (PDT)
- This seems reasonable to me. --mav
Redid the first paragraph modeling it after the Soviet Union page. User:Fredbauder
Added information about Taiwan. Not including that information makes causes extreme NPOV. While it is true that there are probably too few people who think that the Republic of China is the sole government of China, there are a *lot* of people who think that
Taiwan is part of China, and not including information on Taiwan is like linking Korea to only South Korea.
OK, I'm going in to make the changes I proposed (there were no further objections). There have been some changes to the pages, I'll try to keep them as I shuffle. Jeronimo 23:26 Jul 31, 2002 (PDT)
Whoa......
By identifying the PRC with China and moving the Taiwan information off, you are running into serious NPOV issues here. Basically anyone from the PRC is going to object to Taiwan not being included in the China heading, and about 40% of the people on Taiwan are also going to object for different reasons.
The notion that the ROC is the sole government of China is can be viewed as a fringe notion, but the notion that Taiwan is part of either a cultural unit known as China or part of the People's Republic of China has enough people supporting it that it shouldn't be excluded.
Made some modifications. Basically if you make any simplifications you will upset someone so in true Wikipedia spirit, I think the best thing to do is to describe the controversy. The thing to keep in mind about the status of Taiwan is that it is *deliberately* kept unclear and confusing because any clarity will result in people shooting each other. -- User:Roadrunner
- Roadrunner, could you give your objections next time before I make a move? I think this is not against NPOV issues, as discussed above. I agree that the disambiguation header was maybe a little short. Please read the above discussion as well...
My objections are as follows:
1) The problem is that while almost no one still seriously believes that the ROC is the legitimate government of all of China, the position that China refers to the PRC and excludes Taiwan is objectionable (for different reasons) to about 90% of the people in the PRC and about 30 to 70% (depending on how you phrase the question) of people on Taiwan.
2) The Republic of China existed before the move to Taiwan and even though it might be synonymous with Taiwan in 2002, it didn't include Taiwan at all in 1920.
I wouldn't object if the article doesn't make the equation PRC=China and included discussion on the status of Taiwan and then a link.
Yes, but we're making an English-language encyclopedia. For them (and for most other language I speak (Dutch, French, German, Swedish) or know of) China refers to the PRC in the first place. Second is the porcelain, and only third is Taiwan (if at all). Given Wikipedia:Naming conventions, this means we should put the article about the PRC here. For those that come here and expect any of the other meanings of China (a minority), we place a link to the other articles. This should mention something more than it did some minutes ago, but it should be there. If all those Chinese people you mention are reasonable, they will see that the situation is confusing and that there's no way to solve it with encyclopedia articles if it cannot be solved in real life.
As for the Republic of China, two solutions are possible there. I didn't know the RoC was also used in the post-imperial time, but it was, as you mention. Since both uses seem to be equally valid, we might consider making a disambiguation page out of that page or maybe, because Taiwan already has it's own article, mention at the top or bottom that RoC is used as the official name for Taiwan. Jeronimo
The problem here is that most English speakers don't know that much about Chinese politics or the China/Taiwan issue which is why they come to an encyclopedia in the first place. I really think that there are serious NPOV problems if you arrange the article China in a way that most Chinese find objectionable even if they are not English speakers.
- OK, Roadrunner, what about this: My proposal remains the same, but in the header of the article we add a link to a page where the China naming issues is addressed.
The main problem is not pointing China to Taiwan and there isn't really a necesscity to put a disambiguation link to Taiwan from China. The problem is arranging the article so that it takes no position on whether Taiwan is or is not part of China and whether China is or is not synomous with the PRC.
--- User:Roadrunner
What about this.......
- Point PRC to China
- Point ROC to its own article which points to Taiwan
- Include a intro paragraph which reads like it does now and include a explanation of the status of Taiwan with a link to Taiwan.
- Change the map to indicate Taiwan's disputed status
- Include the flag of both PRC and Republic of China (which was the flag of all of China before 1949).
--- User:Roadrunner
What about now?
--- User:Roadrunner
Several of us have already gone over this and decided to do exactly what Jeronimo and Fred did. The status issue is important the both nations so a short lead-in paragraph should be in both China and Taiwan and the full text should be in a separate article that is linked from both of the lead-ins. --mav
- I concur. Jeronimo
- With the exception of the map and the flag, I'm happy with the way the
article is. The important things here are....
1) The link go from PRC -> China (main article) and not China -> PRC 2) The sublinks be labelled as information about Mainland China and not China.
I think that if I argue at this point, I'll just make things more confusing.
OK, to stop the confusion indeed, I propose the following to solve that: I will make a page at China/Temp (or anybody can do that in fact), where we work out the exact text - we can also apply the WikiProject Countries template at the same time. In that way, there's no trouble with the article while we work this out together. Jeronimo
That sounds fine. One thing to keep in mind here is that there enough landmines here that seemingly subtle things can set people off while things that seem like they would cause screaming fights actually don't.
Fortunately enough formulas and clever wording can be found to keep people from shooting each other or worse yet throwing nukes at each other so wording a wikipedia article should be simple. (You can just imagine the amount of screaming there is in writing history textbooks in Taiwan.)
To finish my "summary" of the China/Temp edit: attempt at writing of a disclaimer (I think it's too long, but I can't see what to leave out, if anything), apply WikiProject Countries format first step. Jeronimo 23:41 Aug 1, 2002 (PDT)
First, the table you have does not display well in Netscape. Getting the sidebar to the right beging over written on the table. Netscape 4.7 under windows 95.
Second, this paragraph:
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.
I don't like it, but hard to say just why. I guess one thing is that China exists seperate from the claims of the governments. The other is that Taiwan does not claim independence. This, in fact, is part of the delicate dance the two governments. engage in; the PRC does not invade Taiwan so long as Taiwan does not declare independence. In the past the Republic of China claimed to be the government of all China. They seem to have dropped that so not sure they could be said to claim the name China.
- About the displaying of the table - please submit a bug report, although I think it is a bug of Netscape 4.7 (it looks good in NS 6.1).
- As for the paragraph text: feel free to edit it, or propose new wording, especially if the factual information is incorrect! Jeronimo
- I've changed the stuff in China/Temp we should discuss it there.
I thought it was agreed that the article would be about the PRC, with a clear header explaining the situation. Although the text I put down may have been wrong, that concept has totally vanished right now. Why? Jeronimo
- I don't recall agreeing to that. User:Roadrunner
The article on China should be about well .... China.
Exactly! And in English language, that means the PRC. All English language encyclopedias and dictionaries will confirm that. And Wikipedia is also an English language encyclopedia. People that look up China expect the article to be about that country that is officially called PRC. Like I said before, the article about the Netherlands doesn't tell you it is a "historic region" in which the present countries the "Kingdom of the Netherlands" and the "Kingdom of Belgium" are located. Jeronimo
Most English speakers have these sorts of expectation not because they know anything about Chinese politics, but because of the way the rest of the world works. Most countries are nice neat pigeon-holed one country is ruled by one government with a short name and a long name.
The problem is that China is a special case because if you try to apply that to the Chinese situation, atom bombs go off and people die. So the way people have prevented a war is to *intentionally* make the situation ambigious. It's maddening for mapmakers and encyclopedia article writers but that's really a small price to pay for preventing world war III.
Because China is a special case where the diplomats have played with the concept of the nation state to prevent a major war, the encyclopedia article should also be a special case.
--- User:Roadrunner
What about an article on Korea? Or a pre-1991 article on Germany? Or a pre-1975 on Vietnam?
There would be lots of people terribly offended if you point an article on Korea only to South Korea.
--- User:Roadrunner
- Oh come on, are you seriously claiming that encyclopedia articles will set of a World War? Well then, we'd better warn the for a nuclear attack then, since there are 100s of encyclopedias, dictionaries, reference books and maps in dozens of languages that say China = PRC.
The nice thing about Korea is that nobody automatically identifies Korea with North or South, or (formerly) Germany with East or West. However, that IS the case for China. Jeronimo
No matter what the situation is in English, if you structure the article in a way that most Chinese find offensive then you have serious NPOV problems.
If you make the identification PRC=China and exclude
Taiwan from the PRC, you pretty much everyone in the PRC
and about 40% of the people on Taiwan. You make about
40% of the people on Taiwan really happy.
If you make the identification PRC=China and include Taiwan, then you make most people in the PRC happy but you offend pretty much everyone in Taiwan.
The best course of action is what the diplomats do and take no position on whether PRC=China and explain why.
NPOV is not about not offending anybody.
The fact is that most people in the (English speaking) world think that Paris is in France may upset the few inhabitants of Paris, Texas - but that does not mean the article should be about the both. The China situation is - from Wikipedia's name giving point - no different.
If the people of China or Taiwan are offended by one encyclopedia article, well they should be really p*ssed off about those 5,000,000,000 that associate China with the PRC. Jeronimo
But there is something seriously wrong if an article on China offends most Chinese.
Also, people in Mainland China and Taiwan *ARE* that emotionally attached to this issue, and this issue is a *major* irritant in PRC-United States relations. If the United States Department of State published an official document which identified China with PRC and excluded Taiwan, then we'd be looking at a diplomatic crisis possibly leading to a major nuclear war. That's why the Taiwan entry in the CIA fact book is in a special appendix and not between Syria and Tanzania, and the United States government is very very careful to not officially refer to Taiwan as a nation.
- If the CIA were so careful about this issue, then WHY is there an entry called "China" which is about the PRC? Taiwan IS separately mentioned in the article as claiming the Spratley Islands, so it is certainly not part of the PRC there... Do I call George, or will you? Jeronimo
- Because the way the CIA fact book words it, you can
interpret it as PRC=China, Taiwan is part of PRC which makes the PRC happy. You can also interpret it so that it isn't.
That trick probably wouldn't work in Wikipedia because the US is basically ignoring Taiwan in this situation. You
- can* write the article that way which would make the
PRC very happy, but would tick off everyone in Taiwan, and it wouldn't reflect the fact that the PRC doesn't have administrative control over Taiwan.
By the way, I don't have an objection to most of the article on China being about the PRC. What I'm asking for is to phrase the introduction to make it clear that the identification between PRC=China isn't universially accepted. China is a nation and the PRC is a particular government of that nation.
Also, keep in mind that the PRC didn't exist in 1750 while China did.
- So then, why not accept the previously proposed format, with a short introductory paragraph and the rest about the PRC? There may have been incorrect information in that paragraph I wrote, but you can simply correct that. Jeronimo
- The main problem was that the paragraph was factually
incorrect and didn't get to the heart of the controversy. See the talk:China/Temp for more details. Once you figure out the heart of the controversy (which is about Taiwan and not really about the PRC), the article can be made much simpler.
What I was proposing was an intro paragraph saying
(China) is (blah, blah, blah). Mainland China is administered by the People's Republic of China. Taiwan is a special case described in a separate article.
(most of the sublinks *aren't* affected by the controversy the only ones that are are those on politics and military. military should point to PLA anyway).
The map and the flag might be problems but they can be dealt with after the text is set.
- Go ahead and rewrite the paragraph, but I'd propose to make it bold or italic, so that the reader can easily separate it from the main article about the PRC, which should normally include the flag and map, since they're maps of the PRC. The map should be replace, btw, but only because this one is partly in Polish language... Jeronimo
The problem I had with the paragraph is that it seems to be overkill. At this point pretty much no one in Taiwan (or anywhere else) challenges the authority of the government of the PRC to rule the Mainland and so that any article on China is going to be about 95% about the PRC. Given that situation it seems to be the simplest thing to make the article 95% about the PRC and then add the 5% controversy over Taiwan in the article rather than having a special paragraph at the beginning.
I don't think that anyone would object if an article about China is 95% about the PRC. The objection is making the article 100% about the PRC and excluding Taiwan.
I'm curious why you find the format
China is a country in East Asia. (blah, blah, blah) The government of Mainland China is currently the People's Republic of China. Taiwan is a special case with its own article.
(and then the rest of the article is going to be 95% about the PRC or pre-PRC China)
to be objectionable. If nothing else it complies with the wikipedia convention of putting the title word in bold. Also on historical grounds it doesn't make sense to make the article focus on the PRC, and then talk about the Tang dynasty.
Part of the problem here is to be clear about what the controversy is. It isn't what it was 15 years ago.
I think this quote is right on, "So the way people have prevented a war is to *intentionally* make the situation ambigious." We are not responsible to follow exactly Chinese etiquette but an introduction which leave somethings unsaid (as in the article china is better than one that clarifies and makes manifest the contradictions. Fred Bauder
Like I said before, I prefer the format I entered earlier this day, because that is according to the Wikipedia standards. And I would really press to see that format again. Jeronimo
Hi, I've edited the China/Temp page:
- restored the table per the WikiProject Countries page
- put in a "disclaimer"
- move the brief history of China into the section for history
Although I have rewritten some of the text, I think I have not really touched it's contents. Roadrunner, Fred, what do you think? Jeronimo 00:52 Aug 3, 2002 (PDT)
It's less objectionable, but I still have a small problem with it. The basic problem is that is seems to imply the the PRC "owns" say the history of Tang Dynasty. Also, it doesn't really take into account current events. One of the things that the PRC government has been doing in the past year has been to "delink" the concept of the PRC from the concept of China. You can see this in the response to Chen Shuibian that was issued today where the PRC was went out of its way to avoid identifying the PRC with China.
I'll probably drop out of the discussion for a few days and let other people comment (as well as try to articulate better what still bothers me about the page).
- Ok, we're moving towards a solution, so that's good. As for the Tang dynasty (though I think you mean it more genral), I think that Taiwan did not form part of the Tang empire. Anyway, there's nothing against mentioning the Tang dynasty at Taiwan as well.
- We may indeed specifically include (in the history? header? "disclaimer"?) that the PRC avoids linking its name to China. Then again, it may de-link it formally, but all those people around the world will continue to associate the two.
- I'll await your remaining problems with the contents, confident we'll end up with an article that satisfies the both of us (and, hopefully, "everybody else"). Jeronimo 13:07 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)
Guys, after reading this tedious list of conversation, my sugguestion of the best way out of the naming convention of China is using those by native speakers of Chinese. As a native speaker of several dialects of Chinese, I make the following table which should help:
| Speakers from | Mainland China | Taiwan | HongKong | Macau |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Referring to China (Mainland) | China | Mainland (daliu) | Mainland or Zhongguo Daliu (chong-gua-da-lok in Cantonese) | Mainland |
| Taiwan | Taiwan or Taiwan Province (the more official tone) | Taiwan | Taiwan | Taiwan |
| China (the culture etc., non-political issue | China | China | China | China |
Most Chinese, regardless of where they are from, care less about the naming convention but some Taiwanese (like my buddy who is gonna marry next month) DO NOT WANT Mainland China to annex Taiwan and had bad impression on Chen Shuibian.
- Knowing what the Chinese call it is certainly interesting, but what is important is what the English-language people call it. Jeronimo
I'm with Jeronimo. I also thought all of this already had been resolved -- China should be the main article of the PRoC. It doesn't matter what they officially call it or want it to be called. English speakers call it China in overwhelming numbers. This is also the conventional short form used by the CIA and the UN and we have decided that that is what we will use for country names here. If we don't stick to that then we are expressly taking sides in political naming issues. The fact that the PRoC is currently trying to dissociate their government from "China" (which seems counter intuitive for a totalitarian regime..) is an interesting thing to mention in the article on the PRoC at China. If we change the name of the article to follow political correctness of the PRoC that is an express act of support for their policy. I for one say we defer such naming matters to higher authorities such as the CIA Factbook, the UN and especially what is most commonly used by English speakers. True they are POV institutions but transcribing what they use is a passive and not express act of POV. Wikipedia is not in the business to decide what the names of nations are -- other institutions are far better suited at this highly charged topic. I also think the disclaimer is way too long and bold should be replaced by italics. Any article on the PRoC should include any historical events that have occured within the PRoC's borders (real, not imagined or wanted borders). Any mention of Taiwan should be in relation to one or another government that has rulled the mainland. Any Taiwan specific history should be in that *gasp* nation's article and much of the current strife between the nations can be in the foreign relations sub-articles of both or in its own special article. When there are overwhelming numbers of people who use terms in one way and this is also what is used by the CIA factbook and the UN, we do not have to dance around any naming or content issues. No war will be fought over our reporting of the facts. --mav
Okay, I read some of the discussion and thought the issue still not yet resolved. Thus I wrote that table to help. IMO the discussion is more or less irrelevent since China, not Mainland China or else, is undisputably the right name. Period. Knowing how the other guys think about the naming convention was certainly interesting, however. -- KT2
Question for all: What is the standard here for choosing between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese in contributing? Contributor preference? -- voidvector
Most of us can't tell which is which even if our browsers read them. This is going to have to be established by someone like yourself who presumably does know. What is used on contemporary Chinese Websites? Fredbauder 13:27 Nov 7, 2002 (UTC)