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.

-- User:Roadrunner

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.

-- User:Roadrunner