Category talk:China

Huge reorganization of China-related categories

The previous CfD discussion and later discussions relating to this and other related categories cause so many problems that I am tempted to create a discussion on the huge reorganization of China-related categories. --Soumya-8974 (he) (talk • contribs) 07:38, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

The question is, should "China" without disambiguator be used to mean a country or a cultural region? If the consensus is for the former, then we should use it to mean Imperial China till 1912 CE, the Republic of China from 1912 to 1949 and the People's Republic of China from 1949 to present, just like the English Wikipedia. If the consensus is for the latter, then we should always disambiguate the China-related categories, which might make things messy. --Soumya-8974 (he) (talk • contribs) 07:05, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

The English-language Wikipedia changed the People's Republic of China to "China" because of their "WP:COMMONNAME" policy which doesn't (officially) exist at the Wikimedia Commons, but categories should be named in a way most recognisable to people. The same could be argued for "Korea", before 1991 also "Germany", and before 1975 "Vietnam" all these refer to the capitalist country (South Korea, West Germany, and South Vietnam) while in the case of China the term "Taiwan" is used to call the capitalist country. Unlike with Korea, I have never heard of a South Korean being offended when you call their country "South Korea" or them "South Korean", in case of China this is more the case, both Communists and Taiwanese Independence Advocates hate the Republic of China and don't recognise its legitimacy, so they will claim that it stopped existing in 1949 making the People's Republic of China the only "real" China, pro-ROC people tend to view the Republic of China as "China" so whichever choice is made will make a lot of people upset. The Republic of China does officially see itself as China and there is no independent country called "Taiwan", but it would be equally stupid to assume that the People's Republic of China has ever had any sovereignty over the island of Taiwan and many people will think that making "Taiwan" a sub-category of "China" means the assertion that the People's Republic of China owns Taiwan.

So it's a difficult political question, the Republic of China is mostly recognised as "Taiwan", even in the Republic of China itself is the name commonly used to refer to the country and many people from the Republic of China use the term "China" almost exclusively to refer to the People's Republic of China rather than their own country (which is also officially called China), this makes it somewhat comparable with South Korea which never calls itself "Nam-Chosŏn" and people from South Korea would be offended if you call their country "Nam-Chosŏn" but their country isn't officially called "Chosŏn" in Korean, while "Taiwan" is officially called "中華民國 / 中國".

My personal political opinions are favour of using "China" as a cultural region like "Korea" is used, but I fully understand why this would be an undesirable outcome for many so I am " Neutral" on this. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:01, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

I understand this. However, the status quo is not an option as the current category structure is already messy ("China" is used for both the PRC and the cultural region containing both the PRC and the ROC). IMO it would be better to keep both the country and the region category, but the country category would be renamed to "China" and the region category to "Greater China" (the existing category Greater China should be deleted to give room for this). Soumya-8974 (he) (talk • contribs) 08:50, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Another compromise might be to treat China as a region and Taiwan as a country, but don't treat the People's Republic of China as a country (except in some cases, e.g. government, space program, territorial disputes). Instead, treat Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau as individual countries, which eliminates any problems and questions (except for trivial ones) related to Commons terminology. Soumya-8974 (he) (talk • contribs) 13:09, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Striking my earlier suggestions as I no longer support them. Soumya-8974 (he) (talk • contribs) 13:34, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

The problem is that at least @Roy17: opposes your idea to just treat "Taiwan" as a country, see Commons:Categories for discussion/2019/09/Category:Taiwan (which is re-opened by em). Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:27, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Soumya-8974: My suggestions, we should assume de facto realities:

1. for everything related to China from history to present, use cat:China.
2. for everything related to Taiwan from history to present, use cat:Taiwan. except some very specific cases where "official name" is concerned, or there is continuity between the ROC (1912-1949) and the present ROC, which we will simply call Taiwan, e.g. Presidents of the ROC...
3. for everything related to ROC (1912-1949), put it under the corresponding cats of China only. Never put it under Taiwan.
4. make cat:Republic of China into a dab, or a standalone cat, that contains ROC 1912-1949 and Taiwan.

Please think of potential problems of this system. Let's see how we can make it easy.

There's one I can think of right now, that is Kinmen and Matsu. They should be put under both Taiwan and cat:Fujian.--Roy17 (talk) 10:16, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

So for example the presidents' cats. My suggestions would be

presidents by country

presidents of China

presidents of ROC (1912-1949)

presidents of the PRC

presidents of Taiwan

presidents of ROC would be a standalone cat or a dab page comprising both presidents of ROC 1912-1949 and presidents of Taiwan. Roy17 (talk) 10:16, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

an example for my proposed system:

history by country

history of china

history of ROC (1912-1949)

history of xikang //a province set up only under ROC 1912-1949

history of the PRC

history of taiwan

history of ROC made into a dab, pointing to history of ROC (1912-1949) and history of taiwan. Roy17 (talk) 07:41, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@Roy17

“

for everything related to ROC (1912-1949), put it under the corresponding cats of China only. Never put it under Taiwan.

”

Even anything related to Mongolia (which is already made an independent state by Russian Empire's support) under this period should do so?

For your 4th suggestion, I choose the de facto situation, a dab. This is my valid comment for all kinds of interlopers. On the later stuffs about presidents, presidents of Manchukuo belongs directly to "of China" or should be its subcategory "of ROC (1912-1949)"? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:59, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm gonna implement this system--China for China, Taiwan for Taiwan--by the end of May. Roy17 (talk) 11:27, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Scheme of categories of China and categories of Taiwan

I am going to use the following system:

• Category:China (Q1411230) = Category:China
  • Category:History of China
    • Category:Republic of China (1912–1949) (Q17420979) = Category:Republic of China (1912-1949)
• Category:Taiwan (Q107312349) = Category:Taiwan

--Roy17 (talk) 23:05, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Basically, my categorisation scheme for China follows this principle:

period	before 1912	1912-1949	after 1949
encompassing category	Category:China
specific categories	Category:China	Category:Republic of China (1912–1949)	Category:People's Republic of China

period	before 1895	1895-1945	after 1945
encompassing category	Category:Taiwan
specific categories	Category:Taiwan	Category:Taiwan under Japanese rule	Category:Taiwan

Using Taiwan as the category name for something whose official name is "Republic of China", is not a perfect solution, but it's less problematic than using ROC as the title. The concept ROC is in fact a combination of two rather different concepts -- "Republic of China (1912–1949)" and "Taiwan after 1945".

Category titles should avoid using "Republic of China" as much as possible.--Roy17 (talk) 10:11, 20 October 2022 (UTC)