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Signing of posts

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Please discuss this at Wikiquette assistance if any further discussion is required. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 12:30, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

---

That should be consensus, not concensus. And please sign your posts. Oh, and if you're the anonymous moron posting garbage on my Talk page, please learn to sign your posts there too. If I get multiple posts that aren't signed, they could be from multiple people. Are they? Or are they all from you? Better still, stop putting your idiotic garbage there at all! HiLo48 (talk) 22:45, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Didn't we come to decision about HiLo48's use of personal attacks on this page? Please stop HiLo48, continuing to make personal attacks will just continue to build the case against you.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Midcent (talk • contribs) 00:12, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Everyone just shut up for a moment. Midcent, stop being lazy and sign your posts, this isn't just etiquette it's goddamn procedure. Also stop using this talk page as a battlefield, the two of you. HiLo48, don't get baited if you don't want your words to bite you back in the future, I've warned you before. Jesus, this is why I cbfed joining these discussions anymore, they always turn into vomit-flinging contests. Now, back to Taiwan. Talk about Taiwan only, none of this drama, you can find your own avenue to continue this if you really are dying to do so. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 00:57, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

If whoever the anonymous idiot/idiots is/are start/starts to sign posts here and stop/stops posting moronic bullshit on my Talk page, I might play nice again. I'm perfectly capable of doing that, as you know, but I don't suffer fools gladly. HiLo48 (talk) 01:21, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

There are three places you can take this:

1. Either of your talk pages
2. Go create an IRC channel just for the two of you, and enjoy yourselves as much as you want there
3. email penpals! fun, just like in 4th grade!

This talkpage is not the correct location. Last time I checked, neither of you two are a giant landmass located in the East China Sea southeast of mainland China. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:10, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

HiLo48

Midcent's habit of not signing is annoying, but only somewhat disruptive. However calling people "fools" and "morons" and referring to their comments as "garbage" is far more annoying and far more disruptive. Rather than discussing what can be done to persuade Midcent to sign his posts, HiLo48 instead makes us focus on how HiLo48 can be persuaded to be civil. I'm not sure if it was Midcent that HiLo48 had trouble with before, but this is the 3rd time I've seen HiLo48 derail a discussion by overreacting to very mild provocations. Do we need to get an admin involved? Readin (talk) 02:12, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, Midcent has been needlessly provocative and belligerent. Rather than making claims of harassment, a more sensible thing to do would be to actually sign his posts as per talk page guidelines, but his refusal to do so appears to be some sort of rebellious act to me, especially since he's been told to do so many times. I'm no longer inclined to seriously participate in this discussion, because Midcent makes inappropriate responses to comments, and though I do have an opinion on the issue, arguing on the same side as him makes me look like an idiot because of the way he's acting. In fact, I'm not here for the discussion, I've given up on that, I'm merely here for the popcorn. I don't even take these discussions seriously anymore, the atmosphere simply ruins the prospect of any meaningful discussion. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:30, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

You're right, I have allowed my passions to override my reason. However, given HiLo48's consistent use of personal attacks, I have to wonder: had I begun to sign my posts, would his personal attacks stop or would he would find something else to make a personal attack about? I can be belligerent, however, I have always tried to be on topic. I don't think the same can be said of HiLo48. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Midcent (talk • contribs) 02:44, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I can stop now, and will, so long as the silliness from Midcent stops. But please note that the silliness is not just here. He (or some other anonymous editor - I obviously cannot be sure due to the absence of sigs) chose to post a mass of garbage on my Talk page. So, who is being provocative? I will say that I know that what I'm doing is provocative, and quite deliberate at times. I don't believe in niceness for the sake of it when absolute (but terribly nice) bullshit is being posted. That usually achieves nothing. The problem with Midcent (or those other? anonymous editors) is that he is an incompetent editor. He doesn't understand normal Wikipedia practices, ignores advice, and thus disrupts in ignorance. It's the ignoring advice bit that probably irks me the most. HiLo48 (talk) 02:31, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Midcent is not signing - but unfortunately he seems to be right that there is no rule saying he has to. Midcent does make arguments that I disagree with, but even if you are correct that his arguments are silly or moronic, Wikipedia doesn't have rules against silly moronic arguments either. I find him annoying, but as far as I can tell his actions are in bounds based on Wikipedia rules. But HiLo48, your actions are not. Quoting WP:CIVIL, "Incivility consists of one of more of the following behaviors: personal attacks, rudeness, disrespectful comments, and aggressive behaviours---when such behavior disrupts the project and leads to unproductive stressors and conflict. Editors make mistakes, so a few minor incidents of incivility are not in themselves a major concern. However, an unfolding pattern of incivility is disruptive and unacceptable. If incivility becomes harassment or egregious personal attacks, then it may result in blocks." Calling a person "fool", "moron", and "idiot" is clearly a personal attack. I don't think I need to detail other ways you've been incivil. I will, however, violate one of the civility rules and tell you to grow up! Dealing with annoying people is part of life and overreacting just gets you into trouble. In real life when someone says you're stupid you can ignore them - making that person look stupid - or you can punch the person out and get dragged away by the police - making yourself look stupid. Let me quote WP:CIVIL again: "In general, be understanding and non-retaliatory in dealing with incivility. If others are uncivil, be understanding (people do say things when they get upset) rather than judgmental, and do not respond in kind. If necessary, point out gently that you think the comment might be considered uncivil, and make it clear that you want to move on and focus on the content issue." Now you and I and Berlinsquare have pointed out to Midcent that we think his behavior is annoying. I've pointed out to you that I think you're behavior is uncivil. Let's all try to move on. "Only take things to dispute resolution (see below) if there is an ongoing problem you can't resolve." I'm hoping it doesn't come to that. One more point, Berlinsquare hints that Midcent may be baiting ("(a) taunting or baiting: deliberately pushing others to the point of breaching civility even if not seeming to commit such a breach themselves. "). He may be right, but still, "All editors are responsible for their own behavior in cases of baiting; a user who is baited is not excused by that if they attack in response".Readin (talk) 03:03, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

With all due respect, I call that post pointless bullshit. It's as if you haven't read my post immediately above at all. HiLo48 (talk) 03:08, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't have any rules, and any rules it does have are nullified by another rule. If you need rules to do something, you shouldn't be editing a collaborative encyclopaedia. Above this is a pile of random strings of text with no attribution. I wasn't in the discussions, or watching my watchlist during that time, so while HiLo was only pointing out what was possible when they said that the posts could have been made by anyone as far as they knew, I actually have no idea who posted those posts (although I'm going to assume they all were made by Midcent). There is absolutely no reason not to sign posts, and any attempt to justify it by wikilawyering just makes the entire situation worse. HiLo wasn't civil, but they was accused of harassment for doing something we have a robot doing. Although HiLo should just stop responding sometimes, this outburst was far more justifiable than their previous ones. CMD (talk) 03:21, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Edit request on 7 June 2012

Request for format update on ethnic group breakdown in the sidebar. Some browsers do not render leading &nbsp; characters, leading to confusion. Please update to semantically correct notation using nested unordered lists or at the very least use "-" character to indicate subsection instead of a space indentation.

24.84.138.37 (talk) 20:48, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Which browser do you use? -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:17, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Not done: Please include more information Mdann52 (talk) 15:31, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

 Done Agreed that nbsp-spacing isn't appropriate in this instance. I've changed the nbsp-spaced version to a bullet-less unsorted list. It appears to fit into the infobox fine and displays okay in Chrome and IE8. If there are width problems, the text-indent CSS property (from memory) should be set to something appropriate. – NULL ‹talk›
‹edits› 01:46, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Another common vs. official country name discussion

For those interested in the issue of using the common English name vs. the official name of a country, see Requested Move: Côte d'Ivoire → Ivory Coast. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:23, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Taiwan's Mongolia "claim" (again)

This topic was much discussed in 2006 on the talk page for List of territorial disputes. Should changes to the fourth paragraph from the top here be considered, plus in List of territorial disputes, based on here which says in part "Taipei, May 21 2012 (CNA) The Mainland Affairs Council said Monday that Mongolia is not included in the country's territory under the Republic of China (Taiwan) Constitution, citing previous statements by the Ministry of the Interior. The council made the clarification...." ?? The Constitution doesn't name Mongolia, just references the limits of China c. late 1940's, yes? DLinth (talk) 18:08, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the constitution itself, the limits of 1940s China included de jure the (then) People's Republic of Mongolia; the ROC did not recognise that state due to a disagreement with the Soviet Union, and any mention of constitutional borders seems to me like a deliberate ambiguity thing (the whole "declaring independence" issue with the PRC). However, since the Mainland Affairs Council has made an official (?) decision, it would seem that current policy has strayed from the old constitutional definition. Since the constitution hasn't changed and no new laws regarding Mongolia have officially been passed by government, wouldn't this mean that the government de facto treats Mongolia independently? That link mentions the establishment of relations in 2002 as a starting factor in this policy, suggesting that in practice (de facto), the ROC government has begun to recognise Mongolia. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:44, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I kind of agree, it is not clear to me how they "still" claim the territory. I've changed the wording to "has claimed". --— robbie ^{page talk} 11:06, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

The claim isn't actively pursued nor consistently mentioned. But it still de jure exists and has never been dropped. De facto it's ignored but it still exists. 147.8.246.194 (talk) 06:34, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Intro sentence: "Taiwan, officially Republic of China" vs "Taiwan, common name of the state officially called Republic of China"

Hi all, I made an edit with the second intro, but it was reverted by N-HH. I did that since "Taiwan" is technically not the name of the country, so thought the 2nd version is better, and also since the there's no longer a "Taiwan Island" article (which went into the "geography of Taiwan"), I thought it's best to point out Taiwan is first and foremost the name of the the geographic entity, i.e. the island, and that the common name of the ROC came from the island. I don't think, merely saying, "forming 99% of the territory" directly explains why ROC is now commonly called "Taiwan". Does this make sense? I'd like to change it back if possible. Mistakefinder (talk) 08:14, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

[Post removed as copyvio. It was a copy of my post on an unrelated topic here, but without attribution, and therefore in breach of Wikipedia:CC-BY-SA. --Scolaire (talk) 11:56, 29 June 2012 (UTC)]

I understand what you were trying to achieve, Mistakefinder, but I agree with N-HH's revert. The wording you proposed is somewhat awkward and isn't consistent with our two hundred-odd other country articles. A lot of the specific arguments regarding the acceptability of 'Taiwan' are in the archive for the move request (which I have no desire to re-hash here) but the general thrust is that both globally and locally, Taiwan is recognised as referring to the country. Even in the ROC itself, there're a significant number of documents, including transcripts from various presidents, showcasing that it's perfectly acceptable to use 'Taiwan' to refer to the country. There's a strong parallel to be drawn with Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, which uses the same construct in its lede even though 'Greece' isn't technically the name of that country either. – NULL ‹talk›
‹edits› 02:28, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

• I basically agree with NULL. If we're going with the view that Taiwan is the common name for the ROC (i.e. the outcome of the RfC), we should just call it Taiwan in the first sentence and explain the names further down. After all, the subjects of the article is Taiwan / the ROC, not Taiwan as the common name of the ROC. :)

More broadly, I feel that constructions that further emphasise name, sovereignty, etc. give undue weight to the issues. Yes, they're some of the most prominent issues in Taiwan, but we already explain the territorial change in the second sentence of the first paragraph, and additionally devote an entire paragraph in the lead to the ROC's status. Since those are not the only things notable about Taiwan (what of the culture and the economy and the delicious / disgusting food?), further emphasis isn't warranted.

Tangentially, many editors here, myself included, spend a lot of time debating about how to present the status of Taiwan (and history as it relates to that), but the other parts of the article are basically left untouched. It isn't hugely problematic, since the article has adequate coverage of non-political issues, but it's something to think about. wctaiwan (talk) 03:49, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

• I dislike this "officially" stuff. It's a peacock word. If you follow the MOS, only one name should be given in the opening sentence. Another possibility for the opening is "Taiwan (...), also Republic of China," ... Kauffner (talk) 10:02, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

"Official" isn't a peacock word in this context: it's used to differentiate between the official / formal name of the state, and the common name by which the state is known. And many other country articles use this format for the first sentence: see France, Germany, Mexico, Nigeria, etc. I think it works well enough, and is probably a lowest common denominator most people can accept. wctaiwan (talk) 15:46, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

"Official" works best for me too, as that's what it is, the official name that the state calls itself. Everyone else calls it "Taiwan", which is why the article's titled that. But formally it's the "Republic of China".--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 16:06, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

• The word "officially" gives the reader the idea that the Taiwanese government discourages the use of the word "Taiwan". But that is not the case.[1] There was even a "name rectification" campaign a few years ago to promote the use of "Taiwan". As for "Mexico", "France", and "Germany", if anything the short forms are the more official names. They are used as UN member names.[2] Kauffner (talk) 20:05, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
  • The name rectification campaign is yesterdays news, and Mr. Chen is currently in a prison cell. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 14:39, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
    • Indeed, the rectification campaign isn't a great example (though it's not really surprising that the KMT would reverse such a scheme, given their dug-in viewpoint on controlling all of China), but reference to Taiwan as a country wasn't limited to DPP efforts, it was in material from KMT era and transcripts from KMT presidents as well. That was all covered in the move request though, no need to go over it again. Suffice to say 'Taiwan' is used informally by both sides of ROC politics in reference to the country. – NULL ‹talk›
      ‹edits› 23:14, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
      • Whatever happened to Chen, the central bank is still "Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan)". "Taiwan" is on the postage stamps too. Kauffner (talk) 07:17, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

The lede should start with "The Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan after its largest component, ..." 147.8.246.194 (talk) 06:43, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

You might have come to the page from the link for Republic_of_China? Taiwan is not really the ROC (which is a minority separatist movement within Taiwan Province). The island, and the people on he island, is in a Special Administrative region. Last I heard, only about 20% of the island actually thought of themselves as not living in the PRC. --— robbie ^{page talk} 17:31, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

What is this I don't even... The PRC does not regard Taiwan as a SAR. While a nontrivial portion of the people here consider Taiwan to be part of China, only an extremely small minority consider it to currently be part of the PRC. Wherever you got your information has it ridiculously wrong... wctaiwan (talk) 05:19, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

RfC on country names

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Macclesfield Bank#RfC. CMD (talk) 23:55, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Interlanguage link to cy:Taiwan

Should it be included? From a Google translation of the talk page, it looks like the ROC article on the Welsh Wikipedia was redirected to that page, which does include a country infobox, but little on the polity. I'm inclined to link it, since it's as good a mapping as it gets (the wiki does not have detailed coverage on the state anywhere, if I'm reading correctly), but not strongly so if others disagree. wctaiwan (talk) 08:11, 8 July 2012 (UTC) Edited to remove my mistaken impression that enwp does not have an article on the island (Geography of Taiwan largely serves that role). wctaiwan (talk) 09:17, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't read Welsh so keep that in mind when weighing my opinion, but it looks to me like it should be linked. Readin (talk) 23:25, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Section confusions

I hate to bring this up because I know it will bring such controversy, but the article and related articles, and their structure (ie names) within the encyclopedia is not useful. Very few remaining people on the island of Taiwan consider themselves to be separate from the People's Republic, holding their nationality to be akin to the likes of people from Tibet or Hong Kong. Personally I would like to see this article divided up and to rebuild the related articles like:

• 1. Taiwan_(island) - Formosa redirects to here as a historic name of the island
• 2. Taiwan Province, People's Republic of China - the province respecting the sovereignty of PRC.
• 3. Taiwan Province, Republic of China - the province respecting the hypothetical sovereignty of the ROC as a nation.
• 4. Republic of China - the government of #2
• 5. Republic of China (separatist movement) - the separatist movement within the ROC, still holding embassies in some few countries, and the government of #3.

And have a main Taiwan article that lists these 5 articles in a primary section, and other related articles in a second section. Each article listed therein describes the articles it points to. --— robbie ^{page talk} 17:44, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Although I detest Taiwanese independence, this is too much pandering to the PRC viewpoint and is so vague in its construction that it is a non-starter. GotR ^Talk 18:42, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Oi Guerrilla q tal? -- I don't mean to pander to anyone .. its just that the conflagration of the ROC with Taiwan would lead one to the mistaken belief that the ROC *is* the sovereign state of Taiwan. It is not. Taiwanese individuals have been subject to PRC laws for years, it is not hypothetical. Still, they have a near-total (excepting a few laws and a requirement to report data to the mainland government) degree of independence and I can sympathize with the tone in the articles here, even if they have some obvious bias. I dont want to change the content, just what content goes where. --— robbie ^{page talk} 18:52, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

We do tend to avoid calling the ROC the "sovereign", but there is no denying that at this point in time the ROC is the highest human governing authority over Taiwan. For example, if Chen Shui-bian want to be free from prison he can appeal to the ROC courts or the ROC president. The PRC can do nothing for him. You say "Taiwanese individuals have been subject to PRC laws for years, it is not hypothetical." I'm not even sure what you mean by this. Do you mean Taiwanese individuals living in mainland China and Hong Kong? Of course they are subject to PRC laws just like anyone else living in the PRC. Do you mean Taiwanese living in other places outside Taiwan that recognize the PRC but not the ROC? Those Taiwanese aren't directly subject to PRC laws. If they are subject to PRC laws at all it is indirectly through being subject to their host country's laws. Indeed it may be argued that those other countries are more subject to the PRC than Taiwan is. Readin (talk) 19:48, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Readin. Actually the page tends to call it a sovereign state, and specifically link to that page rather than to another page like federated state or non sovereign state, or even the (presumably most accurate) de facto sovereign state page. But I went out of my way not to ask to change the article, just to suggest changing the location of the article -- in a fashion more in keeping with your claim here that it is de facto but you try not to mention the confusing matter. I'll address your questions in oder now:

• Do you mean Taiwanese individuals living in mainland China and Hong Kong? That's an interesting side point, but no I don't. I mean the law passed in 2005.
• Do you mean Taiwanese living in other places outside Taiwan that recognize the PRC but not the ROC? Again an interesting point, but no. You touched on it yourself next, it is indirectly, with the ROC handling it. Yet they are subject to the laws.

I want to reiterate that I dont want to change the article so much as redesign the article names to best match the actual situation. --— robbie ^{page talk} 21:23, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The "sovereign" word in the Taiwan article has gone back and forth. Personally I think it belongs there, but I would say that over the years I've been editing it has been missing more than it has been present.

The name of the Taiwan and ROC related articles are not something I totally agree with. I would like to see an article for "Taiwan" that includes the entirety of that country's history, culture, etc. plus some mention of the current government. I would like to see a separate "Republic of China" article focused on that current government and its history (including its history in China). Other articles related to Taiwan/Republic of China I would like to see named based on whether they are subjects related primarily to the ROC government, or to the country Taiwan.

However, some months ago, after many years of arguments and complaints by editors - some who came and went, some who stayed - a panel of 3 administrators was brought in to address the question for China and they established the current use of "China" as the name of the PRC page. A while later another group of administrators came in to look at the question of Taiwan and they established "Taiwan" the name of an article about Taiwan/Republic of China. I think it will be a while before you'll be able to persuade people to revisit those fights - nasty and brutish as they tended to be.

I'm not sure what law passed in 2005 by the PRC that the Taiwanese individuals living in Taiwan are subject too. Can you name some Taiwanese individuals in Taiwan who have been prosecuted and punished according to the law? Readin (talk) 23:00, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Again with the injection of the topic of sovereignty... please guys, stop it. I never said anything about sovereignty here.

see English translation, particularly articles from #6. I actually had heard of some people prosecuted under PRC law since then, removed from Taiwan to face the judicial system .. I would have to look that up though, it's not my area of expertise! I hope you find this satisfactory. --— robbie ^{page talk} 23:11, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm pressing you on this because I think you have been badly misinformed about Taiwan. When you say "Very few remaining people on the island of Taiwan consider themselves to be separate from the People's Republic, holding their nationality to be akin to the likes of people from Tibet or Hong Kong", I have to wonder how you came to such a belief. It doesn't match with what I've heard from Taiwanese people I know. It doesn't match with what I've read in western news sources. It doesn't match with what I've read in Taiwanese news sources.

When you say "Taiwanese individuals have been subject to PRC laws for years, it is not hypothetical", I again wonder where this is coming from. Rather than come out and say plainly that I think you really don't know what you're talking about, I was hoping to first gain some understanding of your thinking. Unfortunately I think I just have to say it plainly.

You point to the well-known anti-secession law as an example of Taiwanese being subject to China's laws, but the government of Taiwan completely condemned that law and have not enforced it, nor has China had the power to enforce it in Taiwan.

"I actually had heard of some people prosecuted under PRC law since then, removed from Taiwan to face the judicial system." I can say that if they were Taiwanese removed from Taiwan for PRC law enforcement it wasn't for the anti-secession law. However it is not unknown for countries to cooperate in law-enforcement and extradite offenders. I wouldn't be shocked if Taiwan sent murderers who committed their crimes in China back to China for trial. I believe China has sent a few criminals back to Taiwan as well. This kind of voluntary cooperation happens all the time between countries and does not make one of the countries subject to the laws of the other. Readin (talk) 03:11, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Basically, what I said a couple of sections above. You really need to check your information. While what should be is highly controversial, there is little to no debate about the fact that Taiwan is currently not ruled by the PRC, and its citizens are certainly not subject to the laws of the PRC. I respectfully suggest that we drop this and focus on changes that are more likely to gain consensus. wctaiwan (talk) 05:24, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I think you might have replied to the wrong section. This section is about the title of articles and their distribution in the encyclopedia, and does not touch on the topic of who "should" do what, not at all. --— robbie ^{page talk} 17:33, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

You listed reasoning to support your proposed change, and editors are responding to indicate they believe your reasoning is flawed. You mentioned PRC law being enforced in Taiwan, which is why sovereignty was mentioned (ROC presently holds the power to govern and enforce laws in Taiwan, not the PRC, regardless of who claims what). You mentioned very few people in Taiwan consider themselves separate from PRC, but that notion is a fundamental basis in the Pan-Green Coalition, which holds 38% of the Legislative Yuan.

A major debate, amounting to hundreds of thousands of bytes of discussion, happened only a few months ago for the titles of these articles, as someone above mentioned. It was lengthy and heated and required three administrators to close, each of which determined that current consensus on Wikipedia was to implement the article titles in (or very close to) their current form.

To address your points specifically, this article already is the parent of each of the articles you mentioned:

• In point 1, Taiwan (island) redirects appropriately to Geography of Taiwan, since the article deals primarily with the island itself. It is linked from the Geography summary section in this article.
• Points 2 and 3 are covered by articles like Cross-strait relations, Political status of Taiwan and Legal status of Taiwan, all of which are linked from the Political and legal status summary section in this article.
• Points 4 and 5 exist as Government of the Republic of China, an article that deals solely with the ROC as a government entity. It is linked from the Government summary section in this article.

These details are already 'broken up', as you mentioned, and appropriately summarised in this, the parent article. I'm not clear on what more you think needs to be broken out. If you review the Taiwan topics infobox at the bottom of the page, you'll see Taiwan's details, history and institutions are broken into quite a large number of specialist articles already. – NULL ‹talk›
‹edits› 01:16, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

"You listed reasoning to support your proposed change, and editors are responding to indicate they believe your reasoning is flawed" - this is true. I meant to discuss sort order not topic, and we never achieved that. Still, I guess I should accept the prevalent view. I was just hoping that, when I posted this I might receive comments that actually were relevant to my suggestion, instead of people inserting their own fears and faiths about Taiwan as though content, and not sorting, was what we were discussing. Yet, seeing that this is what is done, I see a reason not to change things. --— robbie ^{page talk} 11:14, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Taiwanese in FOO

The Category:Taiwanese emigrants has been undergoing an edit war due to questions about whether any category called "Taiwanese in FOO" should be presumed to be a subcategory of "Chinese in FOO". A very brief discussion can be found at Category talk:Taiwanese emigrants but since the question affects many categories I believe it makes sense to discuss the question here. Putting Taiwanese as a category of Chinese would be pushing a POV. When asked to choose between calling themselves "Chinese only", "Taiwanese only" or "Taiwanese and Chinese", 54% of Taiwan's people choose "Taiwanese only" indicating that they do not consider Taiwanese a subcategory of Chinese. This is a significant view. Readin (talk) 13:46, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Not just, or even, POV. I'd argue it's plain inaccurate, as it's out of sync with common practice and terminology, at least in modern times, when one would not count Taiwanese things or people as being a sub-category of Chinese things or people. The adjectives in most modern contexts refer to things or people from two distinct and discrete places. Also the editor adding Chinese as a parent category there is wholly incorrect to say they're just standardising category hierarchies in the way its done on other pages. Category:Taiwanese films, for example, is not currently a subcat of Chinese films. Those ones that are subcats of the related Chinese cat - eg Category:Taiwanese emigrants to Canada are only that way because the same editor made that change recently. Looking at their contributions, it seems they're also, for example, adding Serbian cats as parents to Kosovar cats, which is equally problematic and suggests that they're doing their tidying up and sorting a little oblivious to real-world politics. N-HH talk/edits 15:17, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

That depends on what you mean by "Chinese". When you say "Chinese", do you mean "Zhongguo Ren" or do you mean "Huaren"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.144.198 (talk) 05:21, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

By "Chinese", I mean, er, "Chinese". As the word is most often applied in the English language. N-HH talk/edits 11:08, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

"Chinese" can refer to country but it can also refer to culture. When I was undoing some of the recent changes I also ran across other other categories, a couple of which I decided not to change. For example Category:Taiwanese society is largely a cultural phenomenon and is largely Chinese in nature coming both from Taiwan's history of immigration of China and from the recent occupation by a Chinese government. Also it would likely be trivial to find a source for that view given how often people writing about Taiwan's democracy make the commment that Taiwan shows democracy can work in a "Chinese society" (although I would argue that it is the Chinese aspects of the society that undermine that democracy). Readin (talk) 11:58, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

To clarify some of the unsigned comments above:

"Zhong" is the "middle" or more properly "central" that you often hear when peole say "China" means "the Middle Kingdom". "guo" is the "kingdom" or more properly "state" or "country". "Zhongguo" refers to the country/state of China and "Ren" means "people" or "person", so "Zhongguo Ren" is literally "China (the country) people". "Hua" is sometimes used for the "Chinese" in more cultural settings or by those for whom race is important it is often used to say "Chinese" race. "Huaren" can thus be used to refer to people who are culturally Chinese or who are racially "descendents of the dragon". "Hua" is sometimes put together with "Zhong" to make "Zhonghua" and an important example of this is the "Republic of China" or, more nearer to literal, the "Zhonghua Republic". This has come up in Olympics where the ROC insisted that "Chinese Taipei" be rendered, as per the agreement allowing Taiwan to complete, as "Zhonghua Taipei". The PRC initially tried to use "Zhongguo Taipei" but after the ROC pointed out the agreement, the PRC used "Zhonghua Taipei" for official Olympic purposes but continued to use "Zhongguo Taipei" for things like domestic news announcements. Readin (talk) 12:15, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that explanation, which is (genuinely) interesting but doesn't of course impact directly on how we use English terms, as I read the IP's comment as trying to suggest. I also of course agree with the point that sometimes the English word "Chinese" does have a broader, ethnic/cultural meaning and sometimes therefore you might keep Taiwanese X as a subset of Chinese X (food perhaps, off the top of my head, might be one such example). However, as we both seem to agree, when people talk these days about Chinese people, Chinese companies or Chinese law or whatever, they are usually talking about things of or from the modern nation, less Taiwan, which is treated separately (just as, say, we wouldn't generally make Austrian categories sub-sets of German ones). Categories of the formula "X in Taiwan" that had the "X in China" category included as a parent were especially problematic. Anyway, I think between us we've picked most of them off. N-HH talk/edits 12:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

It's very pertinent. The poll cited was taken in Chinese, without the proper understanding of how the questions were worded, the poll can be misleading and harm the integrity of Wikipedia as a Encyclopedia. I haven't even brought up the Han ethnicity. The Hakka on Taiwan certainly consider themselves Han Chinese.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.144.198 (talk) 00:01, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Poll in question is, I believe, poll conducted by Election Study Center at National Chengchi University and is widely used by experts worldwide, the english version reflects version in Chinese. I am currently a grad srudent at NCCU and had a chance to ask one of the researchers, the questions are as simple as the poll suggests: do you consider yourself Chinese, Taiwanese, or both, or neither? To claim that Hakka certainly consider themselves Han Chinese cannot be correct, I could say that i know Hakka that consider herself Taiwanese but that could not be verified, yet, I guess we all will agree that presidential candidate and former DPP chairwomen Tsai Ing-Wen who is of Hakka origin does not consider herself Han Chinese.Michalthim (talk) 11:25, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. I would disagree with the "consensus" that has been announced here from the participation of two editors. I'm not sure how useful it is for me to comment at all, since the consensus was announced as settled before I had a chance to comment. The discussion also ignores a fairly widespread practice in categories which has developed over time, which has been changed solely as a result of this discussion between two editors. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:22, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for finally joining the discussion.

You're not sure how useful it would be to comment, but you won't know until you try.

Two editors isn't a large number, but no one else chose to participate.

Please provide evidence that this is a fairly widespread practice that has developed over time.Readin (talk) 22:37, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Before I make any further comments on the substantive issue, I'd like to restate the question explicitly that I implied above: why were all of the "China/Chinese" category parents immediately removed upon initiation of this discussion? It makes it look like the decision was a fait accompli, without waiting much time for discussion to develop. Shouldn't action wait until either a consensus develops or silence indicates that there will be no other participants? Two or three days is not a long enough time for this gap, in my opinion. (You may express it as a delay from which someone has "finally" joined a discussion, but frankly I haven't been editing much at all in the meantime.) I'm not terribly anxious to participate in a discussion that at least has the appearance of being "rigged" from the start. I'm more inclined to raise the issue at CFD, where category issues broadly are discussed. (So far, there are two in favour of your approach, and then me, and then a user who posted a rant on my talk page underneath the notification for this discussion who appears to be against your position. So I'm not seeing a consensus either way, which suggests your removals of the category parents was premature at best, inappropriate at worst.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

You complain that we were trying to make the decision a fait accompli. However to me it looked like you might be using a strategy of changing all the categories and then declaring it a fait accompli. That is a large part of the reason for my not waiting long to do the reverts. Another reason is that you were changing so many pages so quickly that I was afraid of losing track of which ones needed reverting.

At first, after looking at your contribution history, I thought you were just making a lot of changes to categories based on general knowledge rather than specific knowledge, which is fine except for Taiwan is a complex topic and suffers from many popular misconceptions. My initial assumption was that you had made a simple mistake and wouldn't mind the correction.

Later I tried to bring the discussion to this talk page. You continued other edits without responding on this page - it seemed you had chosen to ignore the discussion so I made further reverts.

Again, you revered while ignoring the discussion. I reverted again, but was really wondering what I'm supposed do avoid an edit war with someone who simply refuses to discuss a topic.

I see you've reverted again, but since you seem like you might be willing to discuss I'll let it go for now.

The way you've categorized things appears to be a POV push claiming that Taiwan and HK are equivalent. This is clearly not the case as HK is under the control of China, or the PRC if you prefer, while Taiwan is not. This does not appear to be an innocent POV push but instead mirrors a position put forth by China that Taiwan should be brought under the control of China as an SAR similar to HK. I'm not accusing you personally of bias, I'm just saying that such a grouping by Wikipedia that so clearly mirrors a highly controversial claim by one government would not reflect NPOV.

It is unclear to me what the convenience of, for example, having "Taiwanese Defectors" as a subcategory of "Chinese Defectors". My understanding of categories is that they reflect an "is-a" relationship. As I mentioned in an edit note, Chinese defectors defect from China. Taiwanese defectors defect from Taiwan. They are distinct classes.

Mormon missionaries in Taiwan is a category that might make sense only if one takes the position that Taiwan is part of China. This is of course highly controversial. The current Wikipedia naming decision for Taiwan and China have them distinct, of course. And even if Taiwan were part of China, why the asterisk whose only purpose seems to be to group Taiwan and HK together as per PRC ambitions?Readin (talk) 23:37, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Totally agree with all that Readin has said above on this. You made the changes unilaterally in a series of edits on July 6, having made several similar edits on previous occasions; and despite having been reverted previously on several occasions over the years on this specific page for example. The error - and it is an error, by any rational standard - was spotted, a thread opened here where no serious dissenting voices refuted the assertion of error and you were notified on your talk page. Readin and I went to the trouble of putting the error right on multiple pages, but you then chose to revert and edit war across many of them without even contributing to any discussion. The only rationale you then deigned to offer was via edit summaries, citing "convenience" (having previously made the unilateral declaration in one from a couple of years ago that Taiwanese must be Chinese, because another name for Taiwan is ROC, despite that being your original research and flying in the face of real world practice). Sorry, but "convenience" does not trump accuracy - otherwise, heck, why not add "Japanese X" as a parent, or "German X" as a parent to every "Austrian X". As noted and per the above, the only person trying to force a fait accompli was you, both with the initial edits and by complaining and edit-warring when politely notified of the problem rather than holding your hands up and acknowledging that such things happen when doing en masse category tidying. That said, adding a see also, as you have now done on several pages seems OK to me in most cases, and surely addresses the "convenience" point, such as it is. N-HH talk/edits 07:14, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I see quite a bit that I disagree with with how the two editors above have characterised the situation, from the very beginning of the statements of understanding of how categories "work" or are intended to work, to an unfamiliarity with current inconsistent structures of the Taiwan/Taiwanese people category trees, to the details of "what happened", to the analysis of my personal beliefs and motives, to the understanding of what constitutes a consensus. There also seems to be a bit of blindspot with regards to the fact that POV issues are often, as here, double-sided—not including information can sometimes be as POV as including it. I think it would be more productive (and less of a time waste for me) to see what others think rather than to parse out the details of why the comments are problematic. So I'm happy to do that. The drama is exciting any all, but frankly it's just not that important, though there are also some who will choose to die on a selected molehill. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:39, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm well aware that there are two sides to this question. I've said many times over the years that in some cases NPOV is simply impossible so we just have to do our best to compromise between the two. In most articles we address the problem by using more text to explain what is going on. But for the categories we can't easily do that, so this looks a situation where we need to compromise. The approach of using the "see also" hatnote is an example of such a compromise. To the person who views Taiwan as part of China, it looks wrong because Taiwan should be a subcategory. To the person who views Taiwan as separate from China it looks wrong because there is no reason to mention China at all (or, if you are going to mention former colonizers, why not include Japan too?). I think it is the best we can do in this difficult situation, although I would be happy if someone comes up with a better solution. Readin (talk) 23:21, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree that it's an elegant solution/compromise. If the China/Chinese parent categories are removed (and there are still a ton of categories out there for Taiwan/Taiwanese categories that have these as parents), it would be nice if it were replaced with a "see also" template rather than just a simple removal. I would be happy to work on this issue, but do not want to do anything unless it meets with general approval of "consensus". I understand that some users may have regarded my edits as "edit warring"; I apologise that my edits gave the impression that that was my intent. My talk page and user page sometimes gets vandalised by users who apparently misunderstand my position on categories to be some sort of pro-PRC bias, and sometimes it's difficult to filter out the riff-raff drive-by-insults from the legitimately productive editors like yourselves. There was recently another editor on the other side posting screeds on my page, so it sometimes seems I can't win no matter what I do. But I do also stand by the position that it's always best to discuss and reach a consensus after a period of time prior to deleting something you disagree with, especially if the thing is restored by another editor. In other words, there can be no edit war without two sides. (Finally, I'm a little hung up on the suggestions above that with categories "'convenience' does not trump accuracy"—because actually it does very often do just that. For a mundane example, Category:Regions of Belgium contains as a subcategory Category:People by region in Belgium, even though nothing contained in Category:People by region in Belgium is an actual region of Belgium. This is an example that is not really parallel with this situation, but it does illustrate that the principal goal of categories is not strict "accurracy", whatever that might mean. It is to make browsing convenience and intuitive for readers. There, now that that is off my chest, I'm willing to drop the issue.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:58, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

OK, that all seems good. Can I stress again though that, for me at least, this is not a POV issue as such, by which I mean not only that I hold no strong real-world POV either way on, and have no personal stake in, Taiwan-China or One China issues but also that I don't think it's actually a POV issue as such to start with, at least in this respect. What the relationship between Taiwan and China should be, or "is" at some fundamental level, is one thing; but the only question I ask here is what the rest of the world actually does and says. And real-world sources, from the person in the street to serious reference works, very definitely do not say that Taipei, say, is a "Chinese city" or "in China", or that Acer - or to be really confusing, China Airlines - is a "Chinese company" on account of being a Taiwanese one. Perhaps we can continue to disagree in principle on the accuracy issue (in so far as it is ever possible to be 100% accurate in categorisation, especially in more historical contexts when it comes to Taiwan/China) and how to link categories, but the "See Also" solution seems to sidestep that for now anyway (and, I'd add, it's not merely a compromise, but actually an improvement for those categories that did not have any direct route to what are the - undoubtedly - related Chinese categories until now). N-HH talk/edits 07:47, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Percent of Taiwanese aborigines by Counties of Taiwan

Where I get Percent of Taiwanese aborigines by Counties of Taiwan?--Kaiyr (talk) 14:33, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Reversion of change to Names section

I've reverted this edit as the names added aren't so much names or colloquialisms that can substitute for the word "Taiwan", but things Taiwan has been described as. wctaiwan (talk) 04:03, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Taiwanese culture

Readin says "Taiwanese" is used culturally. What was "Taiwanese" culture during the time that Eisenhower visited Taipei? What is "Taiwanese" culture now? Is it inclusive of the Hakka? Is it inclusive of the mainlanders? Why not make the captions for those pictures complete NPOV by not making any reference to "Taiwanese" or "Chinese"? It's enough to say that Eisenhower waved to crowds in Taipei and Wu San-liang, a non-Kuomingtang politician won the elections. What purpose does it serve to inject "Taiwanese" (or "Chinese" for that matter, e.g. "Eisenhower waved to Chinese crowds in Taipei") in the picture? NPOV would be to not address it at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.46.140 (talk) 21:11, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Although I am not bothered by that caption, removing descriptors altogether is more concise and not vague, as it is clearly written that the crowds are in Taipei. GotR ^Talk 21:25, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

I can live with removing the "Taiwanese" from the photo caption. However it is useful to know that Su was Taiwanese as it wasn't just unusual to have a non-KMT politician at that time, it was also unusual to have a Taiwanese politician at that time. I have to admit when I re-inserted "Taiwanese" into the caption I was reacting to the stated reason for removal, that "Taiwanese" was "anachronistic". It is no more so than we use "Taiwan" when discussing events from the 1800s when it was known as "Formosa". In the English of the 1950s "Formosa" and "Formosan" were still in common usage and the modern equivalents are "Taiwan" and "Taiwanese". Readin (talk) 22:22, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

He wouldn't have been called Taiwanese back then. He would have been called Benshenren. And Eisenhower would most certainly say that he was waving to Chinese people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.46.140 (talk) 21:51, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

This is an English Wikipedia. Su wouldn't have been called "benshengren" in English because very few English speakers would have known what it meant. Most likely he would have been called "Formosan", the modern English equivalent of which is "Taiwanese". As for Eisenhower, given that he was leading a country through the Cold War, he was likely very concerned with keeping the alliance with Chiang Kai-Shek strong and would have used "Chinese" simply to avoid offending his hosts, not to mention the propaganda benefits of calling Taiwan "Free China". In any case, I think removing the word "Taiwanese" from the photo of Eisenhower is ok for brevity. Given the page the photo is on, it is pretty obvious who he is waving to. We should keep the description "Taiwanese" for Su because it is an important fact about him as well as being the most readily understandable term for English speakers. Readin (talk) 06:52, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

PR China

I pay a lot of attention to news and issues related to China, and when I see "PR China" I think "Public Relations China" becuase no one uses "PR China" for anything, but "PR" is "Public Relations". Please use either "China" or "PRC". "China" would be better. Readin (talk) 12:46, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Until this edit yesterday, which smuggled in some changes under a misleading edit summary, the map/diagram simply used standard three-letter abbreviations for all the countries included, generating the common name of the country (including China and Taiwan), a link to the relevant country page and a flag icon. That was internally consistent in terms of format, clear and in line with our article names. The bid to change that - and introduce different formats with separate flag icons and name-links for China and Taiwan and also full-form names for the two of them - was, reasonably enough (and entirely correctly in my view), reverted. Rather than their trying to justify the change brefore reintroducing it, we then had various people edit warring the change, or variations of it, back in, often using bizarre edit summaries referring to Israel, WP not being ISO etc. I will restore the stable, prior, internally consistent version (I see it's just been changed yet again) and then perhaps can those obsessed with changing such a minor, trivial point put their case here first, before messing with it again? Thanks. N-HH talk/edits 13:13, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I self reverted. That was mostly done to prevent the revert war from continuing (though in hindsight a pretty bad idea to begin with...). I didn't see that Readin started this thread along with making that edit. wctaiwan (talk) 13:21, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

It is still clear what "PR China" refers to, and it may be that you are the only one who thinks of "Public Relations China" when seeing "PR China". "China" alone is no good because in that context, it is equivalent to a direct statement of "Taiwan borders China", which is treading a political third rail. The lede uses the full form in describing borders. There is no reason the geolocation box shouldn't, either. GotR ^Talk 13:24, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

While I have no strong opinion (except that we should all just get along), PRC is definitely more widely used and better here than PR China. wctaiwan (talk) 13:38, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Most people in the world (serious sources and the person-in-the-street) would quite happily say that "Taiwan borders China", or at least "is adjacent to", nor is it a politically explosive statement in this kind of context. The only problem with such a formulation, or implication, is in the heads of one or two random WP editors. Yes the lead refers on first mention to PRC when talking about borders, but a) I'm not sure that's even nececessary there, and b) once that detailed name is established and set up, there's no need to repeat it over and over. Again, this simple diagram/map, which comes at the end of the page, once all the details have been thrashed out in the main article, uses short-form abbreviations for the other countries, which generate short-form names and simple links - and it has done for a while. There's no compelling justification or explanation above for why that structure and style needs to change for two of the places involved. As for the "PR China" option, to me that's kind of clear, but it's obvious there's potential theoretical confusion there, and it's certainly not a common abbreviation/form. (ps: Wctaiwan I noted your initial change when I was mid-way through my earlier post - and I was only noting it, I wasn't criticising as such, or singling it out for criticism - plus your self-rv only came through afterwards). N-HH talk/edits 14:00, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

A similar point has been used against me before, and I will wield it now: there is no guarantee that someone will see the entirety of the lede, much less the article, before moving on to External Links. Your entire argument collapses on this premise. The only problem with such a formulation, or implication, is in the heads of one or two random WP editors.—you go too far, and even resort to hyperbole, and there are many times more people who are irked by the "Taiwan borders China" formulation than the entirety of your country, which is crumbling to dust by the day. GotR ^Talk 14:11, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The fact that it's at the end of the page was not my only justification for using the short form in the map. It's a simple, illustrative diagram, not a piece of geopolitical science. It's been the way it has for a while. It uses simple short-form ISO codes to generate simple short-form country names and flag icons. As for the rest of your comment, I simply do not know what I can say in response, especially in respect of the "crumbling to dust" silliness. You constantly cite or hint at alleged political bias over this issue - but it's clear who is seeing this through obsessively political eyes and demanding we factor in partisan objections in order to veto absolutely standard terminology. I'm sorry, it really is much simpler than that and is nothing to do with politics or (lack of) neutrality. N-HH talk/edits 14:26, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

What do you think if you see "BR Deutschland"? If the diagram cause more trouble than benifit, why don't remove it? Georgia (country) don't have such diagram. Ibicdlcod (talk) 07:32, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Look, I'm not sure how amazingly useful it is, but it has some utility as a simple, figurative diagram. Removing it altogether - as you have just done, without any agreement from anyone else in this thread - is just as disruptive as messing around with it. This thread was opened for suggestions/discussion as to what to do with it and precisely to avoid unilateral action. And saying that removal solves the dispute simply sets the precedent for anyone who doesn't like any content to get involved in an edit war over part of it and then suddenly declare the solution to that edit war is to remove it altogether. I've restored it, for now. Whether Georgia, or any other page, has one or not is entirely irrelevant - keeping this one and adding one there would be just as rational a response. N-HH talk/edits 08:30, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Personally I think the {{geographic location}} template is one of the ugliest things to ever appear on Wikipedia pages, and I've seen a lot of ugly templates over time here. It's basically a textified map, broken down to a resolution of only 9 units (3x3 block) and shows vastly less information than an actual map would show. We have a proper, albeit unlabelled map at the top of the article already, I'd like to see {{geographic location}} template removed altogether, or at minimum replaced by a labelled map of surrounding areas. Using that template feels like drawing an ASCII art picture instead of just including a real one. – NULL ‹talk›
‹edits› 00:18, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree. The template is ugly. It provides little value. Readin (talk) 12:59, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I would like to add that the template's ambiguity w.r.t. inclusion criteria in each of the directions has allowed Malaysia to be included here and formerly Massachusetts at Pennsylvania. GotR ^Talk 13:14, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't object to losing it. As noted, it doesn't add much here really. I reverted its removal earlier simply on the basis of it being a unilateral act done for the wrong reasons. N-HH talk/edits 14:20, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

The template page suggests it is meant for cities, rather than countries. Perhaps it should be excised from all country articles (other than perhaps places like Luxembourg and the Vatican). CMD (talk) 14:40, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

There seems to be consensus for removal, so I have removed it. Good job, everyone. :P wctaiwan (talk) 14:55, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Shorten intro section, move details to subsections?

Hi all, I made an attempt to shorten the intro but it was reverted. The intro is way too long and detailed for a country, and should be incorporated into other sections. My change summarized the key relevant issues and allows a reader who wants more info to find it in the history and other sections. To mention prehistory, economic status/ranking, and democracy in intro is simply unnecessary. To point out its disputed country status and related identity crisis is relevant. The history section may already be too detailed since it should cover the main changes in administration and let the details be in the articles of each period, ie, Taiwan under Dutch rule, etc. History of ROC prior ti 1949 should be covered in Republic of China (1912-1949). Thoughts? Mistakefinder (talk) 16:43, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

The lead as was seemed to be fairly normally sized when you look at other country leads. It's quite normal for country leads to include brief details of the history of the country - which here means both of Taiwan as a geographical area and of the ROC as a political state - as well as a round-up of its salient, modern features; which included, in this case, the problems surrounding Taiwan's status vis a vis China proper, objectively presented. Your edit/version removed pretty much all of that, reducing the lead to simply a kind of essay-debate about Taiwan's political/diplomatic status. There's a case for maybe trimming some of the writing, across the board, but broadly we had a stable, pretty well-written introduction - you unilaterally totally rewrote and refactored it without even raising any proposals here first. In doing so, you introduced, as noted - and to be blunt - some rather glaring POV/OR commentary and some very sloppy grammar. For example, and without suggesting that fixing these sentences would fix the overall problem with your edit -

• "The lack of universal agreement under international law over the theory of succession of states and the definition of when a state is considered “defunct”." - this is not a sentence
• "Due to China’s insistence of its claim to Taiwan, Taiwan was blocked from most international organizations and is unable to use its name to compete in the Olympics" - this is really badly phrased English and also presents an unfounded and simplistic analysis/causality as if it were fact
• "forced to use the name Chinese Taipei, a name that implies Chinese sovereignty" - again, unfounded assertion presented as fact
• "Taiwan is the only country and thriving democracy which meets all criteria of the definition of a "country" under the Montevideo Convention by the United Nations but yet is not recognized as one for political reasons" - ditto

Plus you introduced the weird phrasing "PR China", the problems with which were noted above. N-HH talk/edits 17:01, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I briefly looked-up other countries for comparison. The Taiwan intro section has 5 paragraphs. The intros for France, Germany, Australia and Japan each have 4 paragraphs. Given Taiwan's unique situation of having a government imported from across the Taiwan Strait as well as another country claiming the entirety of Taiwan and having that claim widely acquiesced to in international circles, a situation we all know causes difficulty and confusion not just in editing wikipedia and, I think it is highly appropriate that having an extra paragraph devoted to straightening out that mess in a NPOV way. It is after all an issue highly relevant to the identity of the article. Readin (talk) 17:57, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

The problem with the changes were that they focused too obsessively on cross-strait issues, to the exclusion of anything else, whereas the previous one covered it, but only as one theme among many. The previous version had the following paragraphs -

1. General intro re geographic place and scope
2. Quick sweep re Taiwan history
3. Quick sweep re ROC history
4. Cross-strait and identity stuff (covered factually and objectively, after much past debate)
5. Taiwan's modern political and economic state

That seems pretty logical, informative and balanced in terms of its structure. Mistakefinder's version had -

1. General intro re geographic place and scope
2. A meandering, essay-like discussion about Taiwan's status and whether the ROC "exists", all laced with unsupported assertions about Chinese policy and purported debunkings of PRC claims
3. A short standalone paragraph about Chinese Taipei .. again with that blamed on China
4. A slightly meandering discussion about identity and the future of cross-strait politics
5. A short standalone POV assertion about the world's supposed failure to treat Taiwan as a proper country

And, of course, nothing about its modern political system, economy or society outside of a cross-strait context. I also missed out mentioning above further grammar howlers such as "The Chinese Communists, who won the civil war and declared itself as the 'new China'". Sorry, but diving in to make changes of this sort to a decently written and balanced lead is actually fairly disruptive. N-HH talk/edits 18:14, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

That unsourced sentence on the Montevideo convention seems familiar, I think it, or something very similar, may have been on a previous revision of this page. It's an incorrect assertion, which can be seen through List of states with limited recognition, although admittedly not all of them are "thriving". I agree that the lead could do with shortening (and it has sources not used anywhere else, which implies information in the lead not found in other areas), but Mistakefinder's edit was very much not the way to go about this. CMD (talk) 04:23, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

The semi-protection currently applied

See the thread I created on the admin's talk page. On the one hand, it seems to go against Wikipedia's spirit to keep out IP editors (even if many of whom that edited this article are POV pushers on either side); but on the other, the semi-protection may be necessary seeing as a lot of the disruptive, edit-warring IP editors have dynamic IPs. Thoughts? wctaiwan (talk) 08:33, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

The protection is absolutely essential to stop bad faith editors wasting our time. HiLo48 (talk) 08:44, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm in favour in principle of IP contributions - often passing, unregistered editors contribute a lot more dispassionately and less intrusively than many registered accounts, many of whom seem to be here on a committed mission - but I change my mind every day. I've seen too much crap - often the same crap over and over - inserted by IP accounts on this and other controversial pages recently. Whether it's socking from older editors who know exactly what they are doing, or simply overeager naifs, it always gets a bit boring when you see the same old articles flashing up with the same disruption on your watchlist. Given that we have a pretty decent and stable lead currently (I've never delved too far myself into the main body) on a contentious topic, semi-protection seems fair enough. N-HH talk/edits 08:53, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

In the last few months I the signal to noise ration from IP editors has been pretty low on the articles I follow (mostly related to Taiwan). I think it would be good to keep the protection a little longer. Maybe things will get better now that school is starting. Readin (talk) 05:01, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

I think it just gets worse. In classes with computers and spare time, people tend to screw with random pages. 24.187.19.109 (talk) 21:57, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Tibet link on this page leads to "tibet area"

For some odd reason, the link to Tibet from the Taiwan page, leads to a scrubbed sort of watered-down version of what Tibet is...it's to a "tibet area" page, and doesn't go to the actual wiki page for Tibet. It goes to a page that basically says the Tibet area is part of China. It doesn't even vaguely hint that Tibet once was on its own, had its own culture, had its own language, etc. I find it disturbing that China just got done taking over Tibet, it is now trying to merge with Taiwan...and it feels like people are pretending Tibet never existed as separate from PRC. 192.33.240.95 (talk) 19:19, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the link is a problem. The Tibet Area, Republic of China article contains very little information and all of the information could be included either the Tibet page or the Tibet Autonomous Region page if it is noteworthy. Readin (talk) 16:23, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Tibet appears to be specially defined in the constitution (like Mongolia), which is why it is mentioned here. That link makes sense in light of this. If however the information was included on another page, there should be no problem linking to that. CMD (talk) 16:30, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're meaning by "that link makes sense". You mean the link to Tibet or hte link to Tibet Area, Republic of China? I think the latter does make some sense given the context however the page it goes to doesn't provide much information and would be confusing to anyone who doesn't know much about it. Also, the Mongolia link provided in the same sentence doesn't go to the ROC administrative division but instead goes directly to the Mongolia article. I added a comment to talk:Tibet Area, Republic of China suggesting merge or delete but I don't know what will come of it - I don't know if anyone follows the page.Readin (talk) 17:29, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

For some reason, it's on my watchlist and your post popped up. I meant that the latter link, to Tibet Area, made sense, apologies. I'd merge it to History of Tibet and link there from here (boldly, as I also doubt many people watch that page), while describing it as the "autonomous Tibet province" at the mention here to clarify its status (perhaps slightly putting aside that it wasn't technically a province, as far as I can tell). The same could be done with Mongolia, with a link to History of Mongolia#Bogd Khaanate or something similar. CMD (talk) 20:05, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Is Taiwan now something that belongs to China?

At the first paragraph it says Taiwan is officially Republic of China, means that Taiwan is still under the control of China? It's not correct to say that, Truth to say, Taiwan now has nothing to do with China at all in respect to Politics, law. It has its own passport, ID to its citizen. People from Mainland wanting to arrive in Taiwan have to use their passport. If Taiwan belonged to China, the mainlander wouldn't need their passport.Wilson20072000 (talk) 03:47, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Read the text more clearly. Republic of China =/= People's Republic of China.
>People from Mainland wanting to arrive in Taiwan have to use their passport.
No they don't, Taiwan doesn't recognise PRC passports. Residents of mainland China can only travel to Taiwan on Taiwan entry passes, because of the complex relationship between mainland China and Taiwan. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 04:06, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Taiwan is de facto under a separate government from that of the People's Republic of China, which is what most people mean today when they refer to China in a contemporary context. However, the formal name of the state remains the Republic of China, unchanged from the days when the ROC was based on the mainland. wctaiwan (talk) 04:07, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, Wctaiwan is right.Wilson20072000, you just need to know the reality is there are actually two Chinas, and Taiwan is one of them, who's real country name is Republic of China. It's just that Taiwan was unable to use it's real name due to pressure from the bigger China. Mistakefinder (talk) 07:09, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

The Republic of China was a national government of China, including mainland China and nominal Mongolia. After 1949, the Republic of China had lost the Mainland, and the Chinese Communist Party's People's Rebuplic China govners the Mainland, while Republic of China governs the Taiwan Island.Genhuan (talk) 05:15, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the Republic of China now governs Taiwan, which it acquired from Japan at the end of World War II. The question of whether there are "Two Chinas" is very much based on Point-of-View, however. Two Chinas is one interpretation of the current status. Another common intepretation is "One China" (and no Taiwan") which is the official position of both the PRC and the ROC. Another common view is "One China, One Taiwan" which sees "Republic of China" as an anachronistic name for government that no longer governs any part of China (except perhaps Kinmen, Matsu and some even smaller islands). There is also the view that Republic of China government is a foreign occupying government - I'm not sure how that would be neatly expressed, perhaps "One China, One Colony"? Readin (talk)

Shorten Intro section

Hi everyone, I recommend shortening the introducion. There's simply too much history detail to belong in the intro of a country article. The pre-history, paleolithic period through periods prior to founding of ROC in 1912 and takeover of Taiwan in 1945, should be moved into the history section. The intro should be brief about the current key facts about a country, but the intro has 4 paragraphs, 3 of which included prehistory of Taiwan, the period before the founding of ROC, and the economy and evolution into a democracy. I think the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs should be combined and condensed. This way, without too much unnecessary details, the important issue about Taiwan's unusual international status would be easily seen, and a reader can look into the history(or political status of Taiwan) if he/she's interested. Average readers go to Wikipedia for some quick facts, and I'm sure most (younger) people probably have never known there are "Two Chinas". That's why I wrote the Oct 9 2012 version so average readers will be drawn to that link and to read more if they're interested, and learn about Taiwan's unusual situation. I know the two Chinas aspect is described in detail in the History section and also partially covered in the intro lead, but the intro is way too detailed and detracts the reader's attention on 1)why Taiwan has a name "Republic of China", and that has a disputed/lack of recognition status, despite being a democracy and capitalist society. Mistakefinder (talk) 07:09, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

It's not overly long by some country article standards, but I agree in principle that the intro could probably be shortened a little, mainly by trimming and tightening some of the existing phrasing. However, one problem is that people keep adding more and more embellishments to it – as you yourself did with your last edit. On that "two Chinas" point itself, it's a very outdated, and arguably loaded, way of describing and looking at the situation these days. Taiwan/ROC is rarely referred to now as an alternative China. Not only that, but if it's intended to be a replacement for whole chunks of what we have now it's expressed a bit simplistically. N-HH talk/edits 08:01, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

It isn't unreasonable or surprising for a country article to have quite a long introduction, after all, a country is quite a broad thing, and there's much to explain in even the most basic of summaries. See United States, China, Russia, France, Germany, et cetera. Though, some of the history can be trimmed, since it has quite an undue weight within the intro (too much history, not enough economy/culture/geography/etc). -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 08:19, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

The island of Taiwan was mainly inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines until the Dutch period when Chinese began moving to Taiwan. The Qing Dynasty of China later conquered Taiwan in 1683. By the time Taiwan was ceded to Japan's in 1895, the majority of Taiwan's inhabitants were Han Chinese either by ancestry or by assimilation. The Republic of China was established in mainland China in 1912. At the end of World War II in 1945, Japan surrendered Taiwan and associated islands to ROC forces. Following the Chinese civil war Chinese Communists took full control of mainland China and founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The ROC resettled its government to Taiwan. In 1971, the PRC assumed China's seat at the United Nations. International recognition of the ROC has gradually eroded as most countries switched recognition to the PRC in the 1970s. Only 11 UN member states and the Holy See currently maintain formal diplomatic relations with the ROC, though Taiwan has informal ties with most other states.

I propose the above paragraph to replace the second paragraph of the introduction. The introduction isn't supposed to be a detailed overview of history so I've removed quite a bit. What I've left, I've left because I think it is necessary for having a basic understanding of what Taiwan is today. Readin (talk) 14:33, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

"Mainland"

Once again we have a one-person fight going on over a minor point nomenclature point. GOTR inserted "mainland" with this edit, and has since then edit-warred it in again and again over two other editors, while using abusive and incomprehensible edit summaries, eg here, here and here. This all gets very boring. Usual process is to argue the case on the talk page once an edit fails to get consensus and/or is reverted. Despite the claims about the motives of others, it's GOTR who rather obviously has the agenda here and the strange never-ending desire to impose their idiosyncratic views about what standard terminology is in the English-language world across multiple pages here. As ever, the rest of us simply want words to be used in the way everyone else uses them. If that constitutes having an agenda, or "making a political statement", fine.
As to the point at issue, in my view the addition is redundant and arguably an odd use of the term. It adds nothing by way of clarity - if it were there to start with, I would not remove it; if it were not, I would not add it. Given that it was not there initially, and given its redundancy, we can and should go back to simply "China". As is still the case, most real-world sources mean the modern country when they say "China" in this sort of context and do not feel the need to suggest Taiwan is part of "non-mainland China". We should do the same. And the claims presented here about the phrase "mainland China" are simply wrong - it is more often used to distinguish between HK & Macao and the rest of China, not between Taiwan, HK & Macao and the "rest of" China. N-HH talk/edits 10:07, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this here N-HH. I was one of the reverted editors. I truly didn't comprehend GOTR's Edit summaries, so I raised the matter on his Talk page. In an almost equally cryptic response, I was accused there with "the term being falsely manipulated to your ends". I have no sneaky, manipulative goals here, just plain English, which is precisely what we're not getting from GOTR. He is demonstrating either incompetence, aggressive POV pushing, and/or deliberate obfuscation. The section of the article we're discussing is about Geography, not politics, so the games GOTR is playing are simply unacceptable. HiLo48 (talk) 10:23, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

There are plenty of sources that treat Taiwan as part of China. The government of Taiwan says Taiwan is part of China. Plenty of other sources treat them as separate. We had a big discussion with a three admin panels deciding that the names of the articles should be "Taiwan" and "China" however they also said that their decisions did not extend to the texts of the articles. To be neutral on whether Taiwan is in fact part of China, we have for a long time avoided using simply "mainland" (implies that China is obviously the main land of whatever country Taiwan is part of) and we have avoided using simply "China" since it implies Taiwan is not part of China. I'm not a big fan of the term "mainland China" since I think it leans slightly in favor of the annexationists, however it is the most neutral term we have available to us. Readin (talk) 15:14, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the comment that "mainland China" "is more often used to distinguish between HK & Macao and the rest of China". That technically true. Most of the time in the context of writing about Taiwan, "the mainland" is used rather than the longer "mainland China". English newspaper article often alternate between "China" and "the mainland". People in Taiwan usually just say "mainland". Readin (talk) 15:18, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

It makes sense to use "mainland China" because it's specific, and there's nothing wrong with specificity. Mainland China is a geographic term, and it can be used to describe the relative location of things. Mind you, literature, books, newspaper articles and published journals in Taiwan on occasion use the term "mainland China" in English and simply 大陸 in Chinese when dealing with geographical topics. For example, a scientific article about the breeding of carp would read "the climate of southern Fujian Province of the mainland is unsuitable for large-scale aquacultural farming to occur", and would refer to a specific location as "off the southern coast near the mainland" as opposed to "off the southern coast of China". -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 15:55, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

You guys are making it seem that "mainland China" is as obscure or ridiculous as "Cathay," as if we we wanted to say "The island of Taiwan lies some 180 kilometers (111 miles) off the southeastern coast of Cathay..." It is not. Using "China" geographically in contrast with Taiwan may be prevalent, but it is not exclusive. The term "mainland China" (or the "Chinese mainland") neither rare, nor ridiculous, nor obscure, nor redundant, and is used in significant frequency by reliable sources. In fact, our dear friend Britannica begins the article of the same subject with "Taiwan, Chinese (Wade-Giles romanization) T’ai-wan or (Pinyin) Taiwan, Portuguese Formosa, island, located about 100 miles (161 km) off the southeast coast of the China mainland."

You can surely argue that use of "China" instead of "mainland China" here poses no ambiguity and that brevity is a benefit, but use of "mainland China" here poses no problem either. I don't see what's the fuss. "Mainland China" in this instance is preferable because it is more precise and politically neutral, neither implying that Taiwan is part of China nor implying that it is not.--Jiang (talk) 16:13, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

"Mainland China" is a term used by some of those wanting to prove that the country Wikipedia has agreed to call Taiwan is really China. It is a VERY political term. And I'm still concerned by the incomprehensible language used by User:Guerrilla of the Renmin, and the still somewhat cryptic, insider style language used by some here. Too many involved in the debate on which is the "real China" seem unable to discuss the matter in objective, modern idiomatic English. And this IS English Wikipedia. HiLo48 (talk) 16:53, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I was talking with someone a few crescent moons back at a gathering of students. For some reason the topic turned to Wikipedia, and we were asked what we thought of it. I remember one person describing Wikipedia quite well: "It's a place where a bunch of nerds on computers pretend to be experts, write articles believing that they're doing something great, award each other imaginary digital trophies, and argue with one another over silly things that only nerds care about". Looking in retrospect, there isn't a better way to describe Wikipedia. Are we seriously having this silly argument over this tiny, trivial issue? I thought us, as Wikipedians, would dedicate our time to much better things, such as writing articles, but I guess we can't run from stereotypes, huh?

HiLo48, first of all it's not always the case that there's a "super sekrit agenda" going on, you shouldn't always assume it to be so, and second, it's great that you're passionate about a topic, but there's a limit to all of us, and you're approaching (and passing) the line of "pretend-expert". "Mainland China" being a politically-charged term is your interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be shared with publishers of marine biology journals in Taiwan, nor Britannica (you know, the encyclopedia that isn't written by a bunch of volunteer nerds). Now, I'm not saying that you're 100% wrong and the cause of all woes, as I am well aware that things relating to the topic of Taiwan have always been drama-magnets and a lot of people are responsible, but surely people can realise that things are getting too silly here? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 17:24, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I did not say that it's "always the case that there's a "super sekrit agenda" going on". I did not "assume it to be so". And I don't claim to be any sort of an expert on China and Taiwan. Misrepresenting other's views is never helpful. Please stop it. And stop blaming me for anything! HiLo48 (talk) 19:59, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Anyway, I guess all these scientists must be dirty commies, huh? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 17:39, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

What's even more shocking, the meteorology department of the National Taiwan University has been infiltrated by evil nationalists with a pro-unification agenda as well! -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 17:44, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I thought my response to HiLo48's unusually cool-headed post on my talk page was quite unequivocal, and no, N-HH, you misrepresent my words yet again: I never claimed anything about the phrase "mainland China" other than to state its 100% inflexible (Hainan is irrelevant here) definition. GotR ^Talk 20:13, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Let's just look at the words: if "off" means "away and [politically, culturally, geographically] apart from", which all disputants seem to be in agreement about, then saying that Taiwan lies "off the southeastern coast of China" definitely implies that Taiwan is not a part of China. On the other hand, saying that Taiwan lies "off the southeastern coast of mainland China" does not necessarily imply that Taiwan is a part of China. It's like how you can say that Quebec "lies next to the northern United States" without necessarily implying that Quebec is part of the United States, but if you say that Vermont "lies next to the United States", you imply that Vermont is not part of the United States.

Some of the misunderstanding here might arise from the fact that "mainland China" is a somewhat technical term, and if you don't talk to people or read enough in-depth sources about cross-strait relations, then you will just think of the simplistic dichotomy, "Taiwan and China". However, Wikipedia works on what we can document, and there is a wealth of written sources from all points of view which use the term. That's not to say that it isn't politicized: the DPP administration (2000-2008)'s education minister Du Zhengsheng ordered Taiwan history textbooks to remove the term, along with separating Taiwan history and China history into separate volumes, among other desinicization efforts. But again, using "China" rather than "mainland China" is the more biased choice, because unlike "mainland China", it forecloses the possibility of a valid alternate point of view (that Taiwan is a part of China, held not - we must remind ourselves - only by KMTers on the island but also by the PRC and the international community at large). Shrigley (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, since we're in the realm of pedantry and I have five minutes to spare .. the precise text here is this – "The island of Taiwan lies some 180 kilometers (111 miles) off the southeastern coast of [mainland] China". The context here is clearly the modern geography of the modern countries. As noted, most sources in that context will simply contrast "China" with "Taiwan". That should be enough for us too, but if we want to have a meta-debate: the addition of "mainland" is at best redundant – not least because we've already talked about "coast" – and at best politically loaded. I'm not sure it works as an argument to say (to summarise) "using simply 'China' by definition implies Taiwan is definitely not part of China, whereas using 'mainland China' is more ambiguous and hence more neutral". That seems to me, in fact, to sidestep the remarked-upon technical aspects of the term mainland China. Using it in this context is not like saying "Tokyo is 1000 miles from mainland China" or "Paris is 100 miles from mainland Britain", in order to exclude those cities' proximity to a closer offshire Chinese island of some sort or the Isle of Wight (please note I am not sure the exact geography works here, it's an illustration) – it is very clearly a bid to suggest that Taiwan is part of China as a whole. As with the China/PRC/Taiwan/ROC move discussions, we know all options can be read by some people as implying this that or the other. The only question, however, that needs to concern us is what terminology the rest of the word most commonly uses; which is primarily China vs Taiwan and mainland China vs HK & Macao (and any other PRC-controlled islands). You don't need to be a specialist expert to make that observation. Also, pls note that despite all that I'm not going to live or die by the insertion or absence of mainland – what is disruptive and pointless here is the fact that one editor made the change and then ridiculously lambasted anyone who disagreed with their action as having a "Taiwan independence" agenda. All that has done is led us to an edit-war and, er, talk page verbiage. N-HH talk/edits 09:50, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Great post. Your final two sentences especially. HiLo48 (talk) 10:07, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

It's amazing how we've managed to amass 10,000 bytes of text within two days over discussion regarding the word "mainland". Add a few references, and we could pass this talk page section for DYK. </joke> -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 10:56, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I would say it is the "my way or you die on the highway", hot-and-heavy attitude of those who insist that Taiwan is definitely not part of China (which is the core of TI), who happen to be completely ignorant ("I'm not sure the exact geography works here") of this subject matter and still pretend to be experts on nomenclature. They also marginalise a term which is commonly used (unlike the "ROC") and falsely label it as having connotations it does not carry (and by chance in the same manner that TI does) in order to meet their ends; again, this term is fully inflexible in its scope yet completely ambiguous in implication. GotR ^Talk 18:05, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

LOL. Thank you for making your POV obvious. (And I'd suggest you avoid terms like "TI", unlikely to be understood by those who don't have preconceived ideas on this topic. I'm not familiar with it.) HiLo48 (talk) 18:33, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

This discussion isn't centred along one person; what GoTR might say on his own accord does not make your arguments all the more stronger. Address the main arguments laid above, and not the specific details of an editor. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 22:44, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

GOTR has also proved their continuing ability to abuse people, by describing them as "completely ignorant", especially when those people have not displayed any such quality. If GOTR thinks that my not being sure how far, off the top of my head, Tokyo is from China or Paris from the UK (or whether there are any islands in a direct line between those cities and the mainland coasts in question) and my using abstract comparative examples (where, of course, such details do not actually matter for the purposes of the argument) is evidence of complete "ignorance", let alone ignorance in respect of nomenclature relating to Taiwan, then the hat better fits on their head I think. Also, as ever they are missing the point. We are not having an esoteric, philosophical debate about whether Taiwan "is", in some fundamental sense, part of China or not. We are talking about what people commonly mean when they use those terms, and the term "mainland" China in such contexts and contrasts. On these points, they are simply wrong, even if they have still not quite come to terms with it. As they are on the claim that we are insisting on having things our way. They may not have noticed, or may not have understood, that both myself and HiLo have said we are not insisting on the removal of mainland, although we disagree with having it. By contrast, GOTR has edit warred it in over three other editors in the last few days. Again, the mirror is that way. N-HH talk/edits 22:57, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry to read that GOTR has apparently hurt your feelings. But he is not the only editor that has responded to support the use of "mainland China". Readin (talk) 10:55, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

They haven't hurt my feelings as such, simply behaved – as they often do – like a bit of a twat over this issue and also baffled me with the gall of referring to me as "completely ignorant" and accusing everyone else who disagrees with them of having some kind of agenda, which rather obviously has everything pretty much back to front on both counts. I'm happy to disagree reasonably with people over the use of "mainland" and, as noted, don't think it's worth fighting on the actual page over. That said, having this page on my watchlist is more of a headache than it's worth. The title issue is thankfully long resolved, and I don't add much real content to the page. By contrast, more than 50% of the edits I see made to it seem to consist of people scoring points or making the English worse (which btw is to acknowledge that many of the other edits are beneficial). As ever, people with good generalist history knowledge and decent English language/editorial skills – and precisely nothing in the way of substantive engagement or investment in the underlying politics – are squeezed out. Which to me doesn't seem to be a good way to build well-written, factually accurate and broadly neutral encyclopedia pages. But hey, that's Wikipedia. N-HH talk/edits 11:30, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

ps: hence, I'm taking it off my watchlist. Have fun everyone, especially those of you who actually are here to be constructive. N-HH talk/edits 11:32, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Competence is required. I am afraid that "good generalist history knowledge" is probably not good enough, even for Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not one big band wagon. Having a degree from SOAS or otherwise notwithstanding, we should normally say or edit things that we actually know about, not those that we don't. Unlike in the United States of America – where this sort of thing might or might not be more and better tolerated – over here in England, a land where in which unfortunately both of us live, we are traditionally supposed to know our places, and to only say things that we know nothing about when we are intoxicated (drunk), and within the confines of the building and premises of an English pub, an alehouse or a tavern – and having a rant of some kind. Wikipedia is not really supposed to be the place to "unwind yourself" after having some "bevvies", after returning home from a long day (Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not therapy). -- KC9TV 19:45, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Please don't misquote essays to attack other editors (especially one who has given up on this article anyway). As someone who considers themselves sufficiently knowledgeable on cross strait issues (as someone from Taiwan), I've found N-HH et al. to be far more helpful here than people on either side who insist on some exact presentation that fits their POV. wctaiwan (talk) 01:37, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

• This is not a personal attack. NO ONE can possibly specialise in the history of every single Country in the World. If you don't know the history of a given place in any depth, then you are surely incompetent. If you cannot drive a car, or even a moped, then surely you are incompetent in driving. This is a ridiculous and an ultimately false accusation. I am only speaking to him as one Briton to another fellow Brit, you know, in "our own language" (but not yours), except for the fact that you had also "stolen" our language, via the Americans, but only for you – partly because of language and cultural differences – to mistaken the context of my words! I am not responsible for your obvious mistaken interpretation! This is not very different from misinterpreting a Japanese person by applying modern Chinese meanings to the Kanji that the Japanese uses. Please see also Wikipedia:Competence is required. I thank you. -- KC9TV 15:58, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

• I think we can all agree that the status of the Isle of Wight is not remotely similar to that of Taiwan. It has since at least the year 1066 always been governed by the English and British Crown and the Church in, or of, England, ultimately as an integral part of the Kingdom or the Realm of England – albeit historically a semi-autonomous fiefdom within the County of Southampton, or Hampshire, complete with its own colonial-style head entitled "Governor". Furthermore, the word "Mainland" does not in fact necessarily imply either ownership, belonging, possession, sovereignty, suzerainty or overlord-ship.

• In some parts of the Island of Ireland, the word "the Mainland" still means England (E. & W.), or England (E. & W.) and Scotland, rather than the Continent of Europe.
• In England, "the Mainland" means France and the Continent of Europe.
• Upon the Falkland Islands, "the Mainland" unmistakeably means the Spanish-speaking parts of Southern South America, rather than England.
• In Bermuda and the Somers Isles, "the Mainland" means the United States of America, rather than England or Canada.
• In Tristan da Cunha, "the Mainland" means South Africa, rather than England.
• In Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, "the Mainland" means Newfoundland in Canada, rather than European France.
• In Malta and Gozo, "the Mainland" means Sicily in Italy.
• Both in the Bahamas and upon the Turks and Caicos Islands, "the Mainland" means Florida, in the United States of America.
• In Cyprus, "the Mainland" means either Greece or Turkey. -- KC9TV 17:11, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Hey everybody, this is my first time writing on a talk page but I just want to mention that during my time studying in China, I got scrutinized for typing a English paper using the terms "China and Taiwan". They say that I have to write a mainland in front of China. Therefore, the term "mainland China" is indeed a politically loaded phrase here in China. This makes the edit, to me, politically motivated, not to mention his insults in the form of 'SB' is very local Chinese. To enforce such an edit seems equivalent to a child's last respite for not getting what they wanted (a wiki article on Taiwan not titled "Taiwan"). Ikena (talk) 07:31, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

As if you were any wiser than a child for making a claim (that the term is politicised) without any substantiation? This is the precise equivalent to blurting the (completely wrong as explained ad infinitum above) answer on a free-response question to an exam. GotR ^Talk 08:35, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi, GotR. Yet you remain heated on the agenda of adding a 'mainland' to the article. Don't deny that you do not have an agenda, with your harsh edit remarks, unwavering reedits, and apt name "Guerrilla of the Renmin". Anybody who is not intimate with China would easily not see the impact of the addition of 'mainland'. Your edit, on a whole, is fine, because after all, the wiki page is for the general public. I just can't abide you pretending that adding mainland is harmless in the China and Taiwan power struggle on this page. As I say before (which you find unsubstantial, but it happened to me nevertheless), I was asked by a professor in Tsinghua to add a 'mainland' in front of China because it mentioned Taiwan in the same sentence in order to form a distinction that they are not different countries. Ikena (talk) 09:12, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

There are a billion people who think Taiwan and China are the same country (yeah, we know they've been brainwashed, but we still can't ignore the beliefs of a billion people). Most nations official claim Taiwan and China are the same country (even if they unofficially behave as though they are separate countries). As part of WP:NPOV, Wikipedia doesn't take a stance on whether Taiwan and China are one country or two countries. This leads to a question of how to name the two countries. Do we call them "Taiwan" and "China" with the clear implication that Taiwan is not part of China? Do we call China simply "the mainland" as the KMT encourages to make it clear that the main part of the country is China? Do we call them "Republic of China" and "People's Republic of China"? Do we always refer to Taiwan as "Taiwan Province" or "Taiwan island"? Do we say Taipei 101 is located in "Taipei, Taiwan, China"? I don't like the term "mainland China" because I agree that it is not entirely neutral; it is slightly biased in favor of the Chinese nationalist position. However I haven't been able to think of term that is less biased. In everyday life I just say "Taiwan" and "China" because I look at the situation and see clearly two separate countries. But Wikipedia is supposed to be based on notable sources, not necessarily on the observations of clear-thinking individuals. So even though "Taiwan" and "China" are clearly correct in that they represent the truth, we can't use them because they fail the NPOV test.Readin (talk) 13:11, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm intrigued by KC9TV's observations about the use of "the mainland" in various contexts. Does anyone have any ideas about how we could find out more about what English speakers usually think "the mainland" implies? Maybe I'm the weird one for thinking it implies that for an island it implies the main part of the country. Or maybe For most Americans we treat it differently than people in various islands because we are most familiar with its usage in relation to Hawaii which is out in the middle of the ocean rather than just a few miles from a much larger landmass. Readin (talk) 13:17, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Dictionary definitions? But personally if you say something like "Taiwan is near mainland China", it sort of implies that Taiwan is part of China. Almost all of China is continental, after all. John Smith's (talk) 19:44, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

The term "mainland China" in most cases excludes Hong Kong and Macau. For example, in the economics world, you can buy Hong Kong stocks or Mainland stocks, and in the entertainment industry, there are "mainland artists" and "Gangtai artists". Andy Lau has never ever been described as a "mainland singer" in any biography, news piece or showbiz reel, and HSBC separates its mainland and Hong Kong operations very distinctly. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 02:07, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I recommend using "Taiwan" and "People's Republic of China". Even though one is the common name and the other one is the official name, it is a less biased form and fits the NPOV test better. This form does not specify whether Taiwan and PRC both belong to "one China" or are they two seperate countries. Taiwan is part of "China" or not is a controversial issue, but that Taiwan is currently not part of the PRC is the truth.223.136.2.93 (talk) 16:16, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Anonymous user, please reevaluate what you believe to be controversial in this topic. The PRC claims that Taiwan is a part of the PRC. As far as the "truth" goes, you can say that Taiwan has its own government or summarize the history, but to say that it isn't a part of the PRC, well that might seem obvious to you, but it isn't actually an entirely neutral perspective, and its best to stick to factual descriptions and avoid such statements entirely on Wikipedia. This is a complicated topic, but my understanding of wikipedia's neutrality is that following common English language useage is the best solution when no alternative can be found which is completely neutral. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 15:23, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Why not just say that it lies off the coast of Fujian Province? Just as neutral as saying that Long Island lies directly to the south of Connecticut and Rhode Island, no? 38.104.120.214 (talk) 22:02, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Regarding WP:NC-TW

I have opened a Request for Comment regarding WP:NC-TW, which was part of the policy regarding naming conventions related to Taiwan, and Republic of China, but since been removed and marked inactive. There is no current policy placed in place of WP:NC-TW, so the request for comment seeks a replacement for it. - Penwhale | ^{dance in the air and follow his steps} 06:52, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Split

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal to split the article. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal to split the article was not split. (non-admin closure) wctaiwan (talk) 05:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

{{split|Taiwan (country)|Taiwan (island)}} Geographically, the former is the sum of the latter, Kinmen, the Matsu Islands, Wuciou, the Pratas Islands, and Taiping Island. Historically, the latter is much longer than the former. 14.0.208.97 (talk) 04:52, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

• Please no. There's already enough of a mess, we don't need more of it. Yes, Penghu, Fukien (ROC) and the SCS islands aren't part of Taiwan Island, but for the sake of simplicity, let's just call the sovereign state "Taiwan", after all it seems that the community doesn't like the term "Republic of China" anymore. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:29, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
  • I understand your anxieties. But the current state is far from satisfactory. Why don't we take a head-on approach to address the problem? My proposal isn't going to (re)introduce "Republic of China" as part of any article title. (Meanwhile, the Pescadores are part of Taiwan from geographical, lingual and sociocultural point of view.) 14.0.208.87 (talk) 22:29, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose This is hair splitting and would create two separate articles that cover largely the same material. The distinction between the geographic location and the state, or for that matter the country and the state or the country and the geographic location, is better handled within the article than by creating separate articles for each slightly different but mostly overlapping concept of "Taiwan".Readin (talk) 07:07, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: There's nothing much different from, e.g., Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, Micronesia and the Federated States of Micronesia, or perhaps Great Britain and the United Kingdom. 14.0.208.107 (talk) 07:14, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

• Comment As someone else noted, there is a Geography of Taiwan article that serves as a Taiwan (island) article to the extent that one is needed. Readin (talk) 06:08, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

• Geography of Foo are articles for Foo, whereas Foo usually got the same meaning and covers the same thing as the article titled Foo. 14.0.208.59 (talk) 18:08, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, this is hair-splitting that gives no advantage to the reader. Even readers familiar with the topic will likely find such a split confusing and bothersome. This is Wikipedia, not a dictionary. The topic is Taiwan. That topic covers geography and politics, demographics, history, etc. If in certain rare circumstances the word Taiwan can take two extremely closely related but somewhat distinct meanings, this is not important, because nothing in the way wikipedia works requires us to infinitely taxonomize words and their possible meanings into a myriad of seperate articles without a single article of the topic generally. A country has a geography, its a part of the concept, it shoudn't be split off just becuase of one detail- the fact that the country is commonly refered to (in English) by the name of the island which represents the great majority of its territory. There is no reason this can't be explained in simple terms in the article titled “Taiwan". - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 09:49, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
  • These circumstances aren't rare. 14.0.208.48 (talk) 18:01, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. An article on a large island will generally include small, dependent islands nearby. Only a tiny percentage of readers will know, or care, about the peculiar legal status of Quemoy, Matsu, or Taiping. Kauffner (talk) 13:19, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
  • It's like saying Hawaii is part of North America, or French Guiana and Réunion are part of Europe, just because they're politically part of a North American or a European country. Do you consider Northern Ireland to be part of Great Britain? 14.0.208.48 (talk) 18:01, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

• Kauffner are you suggesting that the "tiny percentage" can be and should be ignored? Are Northern Ireland, Hawaii, French Guiana, Mayotte and Réunion insignificant and peculiar enough to be simply disregarded? 14.0.208.87 (talk) 22:32, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

• The outlying islands are mentioned prominently in the opening paragraph, so they are getting more attention than they deserve as it is. Who is this proposal supposed to benefit? Those who do not understand the issue will not be able to figure it out from the proposed parentheticals. The country is primary topic, so the title of its article should be in the form most recognizable to the reader. Kauffner (talk) 10:02, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

• As I've mentioned, the two articles can be titled Taiwan and Taiwan (island), i.e., the country article can stay with the present title. 14.0.208.59 (talk) 18:08, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. We hashed this out when this article was moved to Taiwan, but "Taiwan" is overwhelmingly the common name for the country. That along is enough reason to leave this article where it is, but there's also no need to split as Geography of Taiwan already exists, with Taiwan (island) linking to it. --JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 13:55, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Geography of Taiwan is an article about the geography of the country. You don't redirect Great Britain to Geography of the United Kingdom. 14.0.208.48 (talk) 18:01, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
    • But "Taiwan the island" is only a geographical entity, not a political one, while the split proposal starts "Geographically..."; if the reason for splitting is to distinguish the historical and political from the geographical then those articles both already exist. Finally you should get yourself an account if you want to participate fully in this discussion or similar ones. With what looks like an ever changing IP you may find yourself classified as a single purpose account and your views given less weight then they deserve.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:14, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

• Yes and no. It used to be a political one, before 1945, as a colony that appeared in post-war treaties and agreements. It also used to be coterminous with the namesake province before municipalities were split off from the province (in 1967, 1979, and 2010). Further, it's a cultural identity. Inhabitants shared the languages, culture, cuisine, experiences, and so on and so forth, that people identify themselves with terms like ben-sheng-ren. This identity isn't shared by people from other parts of the modern-time country. (For example, the 228 Incident and the Retrocession Day aren't relevant to them.) Currently only one article exist for the two different concepts. On your final point, I am not editing for single purpose. Editors have the duty to avoid stereotyping. 14.0.208.87 (talk) 22:12, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Then you may be looking for History of Taiwan which goes into the history in greater detail. But again, this was resolved not long ago: the common name for the country is overwhelmingly Taiwan, so this article is not going to move, or be replaced with a disambiguation page, any time soon. And my advice on getting an account was just that: advice. If you intend to spend any time here it makes sense for many reasons.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 22:45, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

• That's just a proposal. The two articles can be named Taiwan (country) and Taiwan (island), or Taiwan and Taiwan (island), or anything that's adequately accurate, reasonable and logical. 14.0.208.87 (talk) 22:55, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. common name being Taiwan. Whats up with this splitting of articles 14.0.208.87 ? He has done the same on the Cyprus article.23x2 _φ 23:25, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Agree with UCN. That's why I said having two articles with the titles Taiwan and Taiwan (island) is also possible. 14.0.208.59 (talk) 18:08, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

• I think I'm slightly against a split. While I'm for splitting Cyprus due to the complex geopolitical issues at play there, there are no such issues with Taiwan. Taiwan the country consists of Taiwan the island, associated smaller islands, and Quemoy and Matsu closer to the mainland. The article on the geography of Taiwan should be sufficient for information on the island. However, I'm also not averse to treating landmasses individually. The island of Cyprus is not coterminous with the Republic of Cyprus (presumably it includes associated islets), the island of Taiwan is not coterminous with the Republic of China, the island of Tasmania is not coterminous with the state of Tasmania, etc etc, and I think we would be served by having articles on every individual landmass in the world regardless of their political status. However, the current style on Wikipedia appears to be to go with the political entity for the article, and relegate details of the singular island to a "Geography of [entity]" article. So while I won't urge for a split, I won't challenge one either. (Note that, should there be a split, the article for the country should definitely remain the main article. The only one that doesn't is Ireland, since that's the only situation of a split landmass that I can think of where one of the entities shares its name with the landmass) --Golbez (talk) 14:34, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
• comment as redirects are cheap and to address perhaps one of the concerns of the proposer, that and article on the country should be reachable at Taiwan (country), I've created a redirect to that effect. This does not preclude the split happening should consensus somehow form that it should, and means otherwise that anyone using the search box to find the country article will have one extra link to point them to the right article.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 20:03, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. Hairsplitting, and will simply create confusion for users. 38.104.120.214 (talk) 22:06, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. Per comments above.--R-41 (talk) 19:06, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Hatnotes

I have reverted edits to put back the disambiguating hatnotes relating to "Republic of China". "Republic of China" no longer redirects here, so it is inappropriate to say "for other uses of Republic of China..." here. The other hatnote to distinguish People's Republic of China is also no longer useful, as I am quite certain that nobody would type "Taiwan" into the Wikipedia search box when they were actually looking for the People's Republic of China. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Republic of China directs here for me. What am I missing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.110.143 (talk) 16:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

NPOV

First, a disclaimer. I do not dispute that the Republic of China today is often referred to as "Taiwan". I do not believe Taiwan is part of the People's Republic of China, nor that it should be.

Now, the issue. To put it simply, the Republic of China, the state which has existed from 1911 and contiues to exist today, is a notable subject and should have an article on Wikipedia, but it has none. "Republic of China" is redirected to this article, which is about Taiwan the island/province/colony/self-govering entity/country (as it has changed throughout history), but there is no article on Republic of China the state.

The subject of the article is not just the Republic of China today. It is about the island of Taiwan, from pre-Republic of China days down to the present day. The correct title for this article should be Taiwan. It is conceptually anachronistic to try to cover the history of the non-Taiwan part of the Republic of China in an article about Taiwan, when the only unifying factor of these parts, the Republic of China, did not even control Taiwan at the time.

I understand the reasoning which is reflected in the current set-up. For Wikipedia to adopt this reasoning is in violation of NPOV. In a topic with many competing interpretations as this, the NPOV way forward is to describe things as they are, without an added layer of biased interpretation. As the articles currently stand, the implication is that the Republic of China which existed from 1912 to 1949 was a different entity to the one which existed from 1949 onwards. The argument is often trotted out by the Communist government on the mainland but the historical fact is that there was no discontinuity in 1949, but a progressive reduction of territory. The argument is susepct and reflects a marginal view in mainstream understanding of the topic. Most importantly, it is an opinion, a gloss on the facts, not the facts themselves.

If this article is about the state, then it should cover the state. If it is about the island, then it should cover the island. To superimpose the two topics on one another is anachronistic, illogical, and, as I say, presents opinion as fact. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:37, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

There is another article title "Republic of China (1912-1949)". The current content describing the history of Taiwan along with the central Government on Formosa since December 1949 should not be titled as any term related to China. Most Taiwanese People now firmly reject to be confused with China, in daily life or on Wikipedia. No more, period. Most importantly, the Government in Taiwan based on liberal democracy is quite different from the government established in China in 1911. The official name of Greece is "the Hellenic Republic" and almost everyone accept it. -- Wildcursive (talk) 21:35, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The only thing that I could suggest is renaming "Republic of China (1912-1949)" to "History of the Republic of China (1912-1949)", since, despite everything, there does appear to be a straight line of power. But at present, "Taiwan" being a short-form name for the Republic of China is not at all in dispute, even if the RoC wasn't always merely Taiwan. --Golbez (talk) 22:07, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought, per the agreement that this article was about the Republic of China and Taiwan, that the history section inluded both the pre-1949 history of Taiwan and the 1911-1949 history of the ROC. But the ROC part isn't there. Did it get moved? Why and when? I'm all in favor of having separate articles for the country (Taiwan) and the government (ROC), but we had reached a hard-won consensus. How did it get changed? Readin (talk) 04:55, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

1. Political-wise, the mixture of "Republic of China" and "Taiwan" is only in favour of Communist-party point of view, since the mixture conforms Communist Party's claim that RoC is dead after 1949 and now "RoC" is only an old-fashioned nickname of Taiwan. And "Republic of China (1912-1949)" sounds like a lifespan of a dead person.
2. For those who support one Republic of China (Pan-Blue), needless to say, 1949 was only a progressive reduction of territory and it should not be discontinuity in history.
3. For those who support RoC gov't to forgo territory claim for Mainland China and change sovereign name into "Taiwan" (Pan-Green), RoC does not represent Taiwan and should be out of Taiwan, and thus should not be "the official name of Taiwan", as written here but not Taiwan's article in Chinese zh:臺灣. CommInt'l (talk) 17:40, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

There are primarily two reasons the year 1949 is used:

1. The year 1949 is used in reference to the creation of the PRC, at the time the RoC Capital was located in Canton. In this case, 1949 is a POV date set by the PRC who feels that it is the year the PRC was created, hence the RoC becomes non-existent and 'succeeded' by the PRC.

2. The year 1949 is used to refer to the capital being moved to Taipei in Dec. 1949, thus beginning the 'RoC on Taiwan Era'.

Again, regardless of which viewpoint is used, the RoC controlled considerably more territory than just Taiwan immediately post-1949. Hainan was not lost until 1950. Several parts of China were not pacified until well into the mid-1950s. RoC troops controlled what was western Yunnan were not pushed out until 1961, until then Taiwan consisted of at most ~50% of RoC's territories (western Yunnan was about the size of Taiwan). 204.126.132.241 (talk) 16:55, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Having read the debate logs and the closing decision from February 2012, I note that the closing decision by the "triumvirate" says: "An article narrowly formulated about the government of Taiwan and its history can be created at Republic of China." I think this is an eminently sensible, if not (in my view) ideal solution to the issue. Can anyone shed any light on why this part of the original decision was not carried out?

Alternatively, the previous position as Readin pointed out is also preferrable to the current situation.

Either of these solutions would be preferrable to the current situation, which, as CommInt'l emphasises, whether intentionally or not, privileges only the Communist Party view of the ROC as a local authority of Taiwan and a different insitution to the ROC which existed before 1949. I really don't think that is either in accordance with Wikipedia policy or the spirit of the administrators' decision in February 2012.

(Wildcursive, there is no need to educate me about the political situation, I assure you I am sufficiently familiar with it.)

My preferred proposal would be to carry out the part of the administrators' decision in February 2012 quoted above, that is to create a summary article at Republic of China, narrowly focused perhaps on the government and its continuous history from 1912, with appropriate references to this article as the main "country" article, and the history articles mentioned above.

(In light of the administrators' decision in February 2012, I am not suggesting turning Taiwan into a geography article and Republic of China into a political article.)

In light of the administrators' decision in February 2012, I think this should be non-controversial implementation rather than some sort of attempt to re-write the consensus. Your thoughts?--PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:25, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

The original RoC article (this) was written as such until the 1912-1949 article was created and everything pre-1949 was ported there (without extreme controversy). When this article was renamed as 'Taiwan' from 'Republic of China', the original stance by the admins was that this article was to talk about the Republic of China as a whole, with only the title to be renamed as 'Taiwan'. However, some people jumped ship and created the (mainland RoC) article and ported everything there. Creating another 'RoC as a whole' article will be very controversial, and to be honest, people are tired of arguing for this and that. You can try to write one, but you will see a lot of hate coming from most of the community (Greens will argue RoC = Taiwan, Reds will argue RoC = dead, Blues are just not there anymore to back you up). The most realistic thing you can achieve is probably to ask to rewrite 'Republic of China' as a disambigulation article. 204.126.132.241 (talk) 16:55, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Anon, I think you are mis-interpreting the original decision, it clearly had three parts: "Taiwan = country article", "Taiwan (island) = geography article", and "Republic of China = government/history article". This isn't about political lines, it's about implementing the decision that was supposed to substitute for a consensus in the absence of one. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 17:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

The original decision specifically said that only the article was to be renamed due to naming protocols. However, the Admins also acknowleged that this does not mean RoC = Taiwan, and that the article per NPOV policy is to still continue refer to the RoC as RoC. But many people jumped the gun saying RoC != Taiwan before 1949 and wella, you have this article created and a bunch of other overlapping mirrors. Liu Tao (talk) 02:52, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, Reds will argue ROC = dead and Greens will also argue ROC = dead. The former sees Taiwan as their province and the latter sees Taiwan as their nation/country. Both want to erase the ROC which is what probably got us to this point in terms of these articles. Blues have to counter both fronts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.174.144 (talk) 19:05, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I believe the PRCs position right now is that the ROC is a local government within the PRC. And the greens are divided with some claiming the ROC is illegitimate while others believe it is merely has an anachronistic name. Readin (talk) 21:02, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Nay, PRC's position is that the RoC is a separatist government who refuses to submit to the rule of the 'Central Government' in Beijing. Greens are divided particularily over if RoC = Taiwan. Ironically, the far-left agrees with the Blues that RoC != Taiwan. It's the more moderate Greens who thinks RoC = Taiwan. But all in all, they all have one goal, Taiwan independence. Moderates wants to do it by renaming the RoC to Taiwan. Deep Greens are more logical in terms of law, to declare the RoC non-existence and creation of a Taiwan Republic. Liu Tao (talk) 02:52, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree to rewrite 'Republic of China' as a disambigulation article to list related articles mentioned above. It can simply describe the evolution of who use this term. What I emphasized was the ROC established in mainland in 1912 without Taiwan is almost totally different from the ROC on TAIWAN since 1949 without mainland (except some minor areas for a brief period). There is no connection between the 1912 Beijing government and TAIWAN while the Nationalist government established not until 1925/1928. So there are actually roughly 4 periods: 1912 government in Beijing, 1928 Nationalist government, 1945-1949 ROC, ROC on TAIWAN since 1949. The separation of the original article "Republic of China" is based on history, geography, identity, politics, and all other realities. Rewrite a brief article as an existence can solve the problem to relink "Republic of China" on enwiki to "zh:中華民國" and relink "Taiwan" to "zh:臺灣". -- Wildcursive (talk) 21:20, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

No, "Republic of China" article should be created and maintained in addition to "Taiwan" article because the government's linage can be traced to the 1912 government formed in mainland China, and the constitution in-force today is written and ratified in mainland China while ROC was still recognized as the legitimized government of China. All other periods can be subsumed into this "Republic of China" to describe parts of its history. --Will74205 (talk) 00:00, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I think a separate article to talk about the ROC as a government that ruled China, and then briefly Taiwan and China, and finally just Taiwan is a good idea. It should also talk about the modern day government. This would fit with "An article narrowly formulated about the government of Taiwan and its history". When the ROC moved from China to Taiwan it maintained many of its institutions, people and laws (whether or not those laws were followed).

However I think we'll have a hard time finding a way to satisfy some pan-blue editors. Since the Taiwan article is about the modern day nation/state, I can see pan-blue protests that Republic of China should redirect to that nation state because Republic of China is the official name of that nation-state. If we make Republic of China a disambiguation page some will protest that the Republic of China deserves better than that (I do have some sympathy for but as an American I would point out that even the America is a disambiguation page - I say I have sympathy because clearly the America page should be about the United States of America and I find it a bit insulting that it isn't). Readin (talk) 05:11, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

It's actually fairly easy to satisfy the Blues, right now they are on the defensive, not the offensive. Throughout the past several years, RoC related articles have slowly been 'Taiwanised'. The creation of this article and the renaming of the RoC as 'Taiwan' was the final straw for many Blues. Post-renaming, most blues actually argued for a disambigulation article, but the requests were largely ignored or shut down by the greens and reds. When disambigulation requests were ignored, this article split was created, with very poor judgements. Liu Tao (talk) 02:52, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I find the politically obsessed nature of some posts here amusing. I had never heard of the term pan-blue until just now, but I have very strong feelings about the naming of articles in this topic area. My views are all based on the basic Wikipedia principle of what the common name is. I just want to emphasise that one doesn't have to be deeply involved in the politics of the area to have a perfectly valid opinion based on Wikipedia policy. HiLo48 (talk) 09:54, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Well I'm pretty sure the average Taiwanese don't know the terms teabaggers and tories either. Those aware of Taiwanese/Cross-strait politics will be influenced by their viewpoints one way or another; it's not supposed to be as big of an issue as everyone seems to be making it (I don't see it as a problem anyway), but nonetheless you really shouldn't laugh it off either. Given that we're dealing with quite a contentious topic here, there's no doubt that some (not all) people will base their actions on whether they're pan-blue or pan-green leaning. Similarly, many people might deny it, but there are plenty of editors on Wikipedia that are vehemently pro-gun, anti-gun, pro-abortion, anti-Zionist as well. Topics like these attract those who are, by your words, "politically obsessed", and that's something you're gonna have to deal with. Not everyone is politically motivated to edit, but some editors definitely are. If you don't want to be part of the mess, that's fine. Don't go around dismissing others' genuine concerns. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 11:51, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

The hilarious bit is that those whose editing is purely politically motivated think everybody else's is too, and that to edit here one must be part of one side or the other. I have very strong views in many political areas. (Although obviously not Taiwan/China issues.) I like to think I keep my views out of my editing. During the recent US Presidential campaign I was accused many times by both sides of being a supporter of the other as I kept pathetic political nonsense, incredibly distorted perspectives, and simply blatant lies out of the articles on the major candidates. I try to do the same for every topic. So I laugh at those who write as if all editors are as motivated as they are to make these articles non-NPOV. HiLo48 (talk) 21:12, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

HiLo48, like every other editor, I have my own views on controversial issues such as this, but I would like to believe that everyone can at least set aside their prejudices sufficiently to reach for a compromise. Having views, even strong views, on a subject does not disqualify one from participating in a discussion. Like Adam Smith's invisible hand, the expression of many different views only helps to establish what the NPOV or compromise position should be. Even ignorance of an issue is not a bar to participating in a discussion, since that will help establish whether the article is pitched at the right depth for the range of readers for whom this site is supposed to cater. However, we need to be careful not to deny other people's views simply on the basis of our own prejudices or level of knowledge. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:32, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with all of that. My comment was about those with strong views and detailed knowledge of the political background to the article, who assume that every other editor interested in this article is motivated in the same way. Comments like "It's actually fairly easy to satisfy the Blues, right now they are on the defensive, not the offensive" (made after mine) are really quite inappropriate here. They are not attempts to make this a better article. And down below you thank that editor for his contributions. Sad. HiLo48 (talk) 11:01, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

In order for this to be a good article with NPOV, all views have to be expressed. Right now, this article (and many of the articles related to "Taiwan" aren't doing that. In an article about America, you have to talk about Republicans, Democrats and even Federalists. All of it and everything. In summary at least. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.46.140 (talk) 15:14, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

My apologies HiLo48, I misunderstood your previous message. I agree that labelling others as "pan-blue" or whatnot and fighting this like an ideological battle is not helpful. My apologies for omitting you from my list of acknowledgements - my list below was based on those who had commented on the specific issue and proposal, but thank you for your contributions, they are helpful to the course of the discussion even if they were not directed to the proposal per se (unless I missed a post from you?). However, I do not think that it is inappropriate to thank Liu Tao, clearly he/she got slightly carried away, but as I said above, all sorts of views, expressed in good faith, are helpful, and Liu Tao's comment, while not ideally expressed, was addressed towards reaching compromise or consensus. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:33, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I think if Liu Tao's comment had been intended to suggest that we take advantage of the pan-blues while they're done, or to say that we've got them on the run so let's press are advantage, then it would indeed have been highly inappropriate. However I'm pretty sure he's pan-blue so I didn't read it as being so hostile to pan-blues. Readin (talk) 13:14, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks everyone, especially Readin, Benlisquare, Will74205, Wildcursive and Liu Tao, your posts are all very enlightening. I think I detect a consensus to create a short summary article narrowly focused on the government and history of the Republic of China in all its guises at Republic of China, at least disambiguating between the various articles which now exist on the topic, though being careful of course not to duplicate the country article which already exists here - this was part of the original decision. Could you please let everyone know if this is not a correct summary of the consensus? As a concrete proposal, I propose to create a disambiguation-style stub at Republic of China, which will provide a "landing page" if you will for readers searching for "Republic of China" in different contexts (e.g. whether they were wanting to read about Taiwan or the pre-1949 regime), and will take them on to the more detailed articles at "Taiwan", the "1912-1949" article, and any other relevant articles. This stub will then be grown incrementally to become the summary article narrowly focused on government and history as per the original decision, with the precise contents and depth of the article (within those parameters) to be ascertained through incremental discussion over time. Is this an acceptable way forward? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:32, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

The disambigulation page already exists. All you need to do is try to get the page renamed. 204.126.132.241 (talk) 02:37, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

To clarify, I am not talking about the Republic of China (disambiguation) page. That page is a pure disambiguation page, treating "Republic of China" like any ambiguous term. That may or may not need to continue to exist after the creation of the new "Republic of China" page. What I am proposing here is a landing page, a "disambiguation article" (as Wildcursive put it) which is more in line with the original administrators' decision, i.e. it is an article, perhaps starting as a stub, which links together the relevant pages. In that sense it is dismabiguation in style, but it is not a true disambiguation page because it will have content, but it will not disturb the integrity of this page at Taiwan. I see this approach as reflecting the consensus view of the comments above. I will park the proposal here for a couple of days to see if there are objections. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:25, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation article? So in other words, kinda like the old China article? Or at least the lede of the old China article? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 12:37, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

A little like that, but without duplicating the Taiwan article the way the old China article would have duplicated the present People's Republic of China article. As I envisage it at the moment, it would introduce the "Republic of China" with an emphasis on the conceptual continuity, then it would summarise the history, and lead at a fairly early point to the fact that in contemporary contexts the Republic of China governs / is synonymous with "Taiwan", with a link to this article. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:28, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I think a distinction has to be made that "Republic of China" is not synonymous with "Taiwan." That's a particular POV.

Hmmmmm. We need to be very careful with language here. The article was renamed to Taiwan because it's the common name. For most of those for whom it's the common name (and there's an awful lot of them - hence the change), "Republic of China" IS synonymous with "Taiwan." It's got nothing to do with the politics of the region. It's not "a particular POV". It's fact. HiLo48 (talk) 21:32, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

It's a false fact that should not be perpetuated by Wikipedia. It's a fact that the vast majority of countries adhere to the One-China policy and those that don't openly adhere to it recognize the Republic of China as "China," not "Taiwan." The Constitution of the Republic of China does not recognize ROC=Taiwan and the Constitution of a free and sovereign country should not be lightly ignored. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.46.140 (talk) 21:49, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

You don't get it. You're too involved with the politics, as exemplified by the detail you've gone into even in that response. It's an absolute simple and clear fact that, to most English speakers on Earth, "Republic of China" IS synonymous with "Taiwan". It's not a POV. It's the way the rest of the world looks at the reality in that part of the world. People seeing things that way are not making a choice about what POV they should have. To them, it's what things are. Yes, the article can go into some detail about the history, but I can assure you that it won't change that "common name" understanding. HiLo48 (talk) 23:28, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

What is your source? Because most of the Americans I know think Taiwan is a part of China; they both speak Mandarin. I've talked to people who think the Republic of China is still an authoritarian government. My point is, the vast majority of the people of the world don't know much about the ROC and as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia has a duty to represent facts, not perceptions.

This probably says more about your choices in friends than it does about Americans in general. --Golbez (talk) 01:17, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

You logged into the wrong account, HiLo48. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.110.143 (talk) 01:40, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

HOLY SHIT! HiLo, did you see this? DID YOU SEE THIS I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW, 159 you should know that HiLo and I, ok, we kind of hate each other and very very rarely agree, so this makes my fucking night that you would think we're the same person. (Also, since HiLo's only been here since 'aught eight, shouldn't this more correctly be stated "You logged in to the right account, Golbez"?) --Golbez (talk) 04:01, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

(Outdent) Yikes, you guys. I think we can all agree that the "Republic of China" is synonymous with "Taiwan" when used in some contexts and not in others, and leave it at that? That the two terms are not conceptually identical is the reason I raised this in the first place (and if you take a look at the "Reader feedback" linked to at the top of the page, you can see I'm not the only one who was confused). However, in certain contexts they are used as substitutes for each other - when I land in Taiepei, whether I am greeted with "welcome to the Republic of China" or "welcome to Taiwan" pretty much amounts to the same thing. The precise extent to which the terms are synonymous or not can be worked out elsewhere. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:51, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the supposed perceptions of most Americans - the guidelines on naming articles do not have common name as the only criterion. Other criteria such as precision and accuracy are to be considered too. More importantly, the use or mis-use of a common name should not be a reason to give inaccurate information or to confirm inaccurate information. Readin (talk) 15:41, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

That sounds good in theory but I'm having trouble imagining how it would look in practice. That is, I'm having trouble imagining how the article would do what you suggest while still fitting the mold of a well-behaved Wikipedia article. I'll have to reserve my opinion until I see some suggested text. Readin (talk) 14:23, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Readin. I have knocked together a mock-up at User:PalaceGuard008/Republic of China, with some comments on what I was trying to get across. Of course, I am limited by my own knowledge and views, so feel free to go ahead and edit it, or provide comments here, if you think it can be changed to an acceptable form. The aim of this exercise is not to establish the final wording, but to establish whether a "narrowly defined article" is feasible. If we can agree it is or is not feasiable, we can close this discussion and, if applicable, focus on getting the wording right separately. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 20:49, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I left a brief comment at User talk:PalaceGuard008/Republic of China. Readin (talk) 15:41, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Readin, I have made a small change. If others do not have any major objections, I will take off the NPOV tag and create the article - we can work out details of wording on that talk page. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:12, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Seeing as there are no outstanding objections since the last call three days ago, I take it there is consensus to move forward. Please feel free to comment at Talk:Republic of China once that article gets created. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:36, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I have created a new Republic of China. Many issues remain, including how to conceptualise the relationship between this article and the other existing articles, such as the ROC (1912-1949) article. A good suggestion was made in previous discussions that we emulate the approach used in French Fifth Republic (vs France) and Kingdom of the Netherlands (vs Netherlands) in dealing with the relationship bewteen Republic of China (vs Taiwan) (though the two situations are neither identical to each other nor to this situation). Please help improve the article, discussions can be conducted at Talk:Republic of China. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:49, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

We don't need two articles, one on Taiwan, one on Republic of China as they refer to the same state. The last time someone proposed splitting the article was two months ago. The discussion is immediately above. The consensus was not to split. So you should not unilaterally do this, based on your own assertions in this thread, without gaining consensus for it through a similar RfC. Others have not opposed you because we have had discussions on this before, the last only two months ago.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 17:00, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

In PalaceGuard008's proposal, Taiwan covers the modern state (i.e. it's the country article for the state) and the history of Taiwan, which would not include the history of the ROC prior to its relocation, and Republic of China covers the history and government of the ROC as something that has existed since 1911. This is consistent with the decision in the closing statement in the move discussion. I interpret the split discussion above to have shown consensus against having distinct articles on the modern state and the place it governs, different from this proposal. Since there has been little objection to PalaceGiard008's proposal (and indeed, collaboration from someone who does not normally side with them), I think the burden lies on you to demonstrate that there is consensus against having an article that covers the government and history of the ROC. (Note: I have only been vaguely following the discussions and do not necessarily endorse the proposal, but I do think PalaceGuard008 was not wrong to create the article based on what had transpired.) wctaiwan (talk) 01:55, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

There is already an article, History of the Republic of China, which covers precisely that. And "History of the Republic of China" is a much better title for it for, as is clear from the #Split discussion immediately above and numerous other discussions, "Republic of China" is just the formal name for "Taiwan" (or "Taiwan" is the common name for the Republic of China). Having them as two separate articles, implying they are different things, is confusing and misleading.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 02:16, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

The new article is obsessive, politicly motivated nonsense. Nobody involved in the governing of the Republic of China (meaning the real China) is involved in the government of Taiwan today. They are not the same organisation. Different country. Different people. It's only those pushing an extreme POV here who want it to exist. A bad article creation. Does not help anyone to understand what's really going on. It's about politics and obfuscation. HiLo48 (talk) 02:26, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Huh? The current President of the Republic of China is a Kuomintang member, the majority of the legislature are Kuomintang. What do yo mean "Nobody involved in the governing of the Republic of China (meaning the real China) is involved in the government of Taiwan today"? The Kuomintang of today is very much the same organization it was when it was first founded by Dr Sun Yat-sen. It's views and it's way of doing things are different, but the organization is very much the same. Just as surely as the Democratic Party of Woodrow Wilson and FDR is the same Democratic Party of Barack Obama. The people are different of course, people die, but the organization is the same. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.144.198 (talk) 17:56, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

What do I mean by "Nobody involved in the governing of the Republic of China (meaning the real China) is involved in the government of Taiwan today"? Are you serious? That's a really stupid question. HiLo48 (talk) 20:04, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Even though the original people have died, the institutions, the ways of thinking the attitudes, etc. have survived within government. This is true both formally and behaviorally. The ROC still claims to be the legitimate government of China. It still claims Taiwan is just a province. It still uses the same emblems of state as it used in China. The KMT still maintains control. Even when the presidency shifted to the DPP for a short time, the KMT still controlled the legislature and just as importantly it still controlled the institutional powers in the judicial yuan (and I assume in the examination yuan as well). The corruption brought from China still permeates the government. The ROC has changed over time, but it has a continuous existence stretching back a century even though a large fraction of that existence was in another country. There was never a clean break in which you could say "10 years ago, the ROC was so completely different that it cannot be said to be the same government that it was then". You might say that about the ROC today as compared to 100 years ago, but that can be said of pretty much any modern government. Readin (talk) 00:08, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, most are very different from what they were even 50 years ago. That's certainly true in this case. It would also be true for the US Wilson/FDR example mentioned above. And in this case we're not even talking about governing the same place. It really is an extreme political position to say it's the same body, deserving an article of its own. HiLo48 (talk) 00:33, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I think the extreme position is to claim that the ROC government ceased to exist when it left China and landed in Taiwan, and that the alien government that took over Taiwan was a brand new government that had never existed before and had suddenly appeared from nowhere (it certainly didn't appear from within Taiwan). We have articles on all kinds of things that have changed so much over time that they only vaguely resemble what they started as. Federal government of the United States is almost nothing like the one goverment that was started back in the 1700s, and only a small fraction of the current territory was part of the original state. The same is true of China. We even have an article called History of Freemasonry that includes history from way back to when it was very different from what it is today.

There is always the philosophical question of whether a ship that is replaced board-by-board over 50 years of repair until none of the original wood, rope, nails or anything else remain can still be called the same ship. However in the case of the ROC much of what was still remains even if the people and land have changed. Readin (talk) 01:11, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Another view is that that's an extreme ideological position of a handful (by global standards) of people clinging to a ridiculous and forlorn hope that a massive military loss of the distant past will somehow be reversed. None of your examples compare with this one where the place is completely different. HiLo48 (talk) 01:23, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how that counts as "another view". It is rather one class of the same view. After all, where did these dilusional people get their ridiculous and forlorn hope? It was part of the institutional attitude of the ROC. Whether it was ridiculous and forlorn in 1945/1949, it is still the same hope that was brought from China to Taiwan by the ROC government. As time passed the hope gradually became more ridiculous and more forlorn. But it was still the hope of that government that brought it to Taiwan.

However I for one do not think your description is accurate. Few if any in the ROC still cling to that hope. Rather the hope gradually changed from one of re-conquest to one of merely re-uniting with "the motherland" even if it requires recognizing the PRC. In the minds of those KMT who still make up the core of the ROC, that "reunification" includes uniting Taiwan with China although I for one think a "reunification" would only re-unite the KMT with their homeland. For Taiwan it would be an annexation rather than a reunification (this may be where PalaceGuard and I differ). And where did the ROC get the idea that a unification with China would be a "re-unification" of Taiwan and China? It was part of the attitude of that ROC that established itself in Taiwan after leaving China.

I'm completely in agreement with you that the land of the ROC is no longer the same, but land is only one aspect of a government and not necessarily the most important aspect. Readin (talk) 04:13, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

But it would seem to be a unique aspect. Are there any other examples of what you would call a continuous government for whom the territory it ruled or rules changed completely? And your expression "In the minds of those KMT who still make up the core of the ROC..." is a bit tricky in its use of the word "still". No-one who was there in 1950 is still there. HiLo48 (talk) 04:30, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Lien Chan is one example of a mainland-born citizen of the ROC who was part of the ROC government on Taiwan, and there are many more notable individuals. These people aren't any more "Taiwanese" than they are "ROCians". Many people don't consider Lian Chan to be Taiwanese, after all, he is from Shaanxi Province, however he is not a "PRC citizen" either. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:13, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually, as per Wikipedia's own articles (I encourage everybody who wants to weigh in on ROC and/or Taiwan articles to read them), Lien Chan's grandfather was born on Taiwan and moved to the Mainland as an adult and bore Lien's father and Lien's father also bore him on the Mainland. It's because of his ancestry that some consider Lien to be Taiwanese. There's so much misinformation going on here as well as misinterpretations. Let's stick with the facts. Taiwan is governed by the ROC Constitution and, not the Taiwan Constitution. Let's start from there.

An irrelevant example. He wasn't part of the government when it was in China, which was what my point was about. He has lived in Taiwan for more than 80% of his life. He won't be going back to China in the foreseeable future. The place he lives and has lived in for over 60 years is commonly known as Taiwan. He is Taiwanese. HiLo48 (talk) 05:25, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

You asked why key people in the KMT were hell-bent on following a delusion that one day the ROC will retake the mainland, or whatever it was. I gave an example of a type of person who would follow such a delusion, and why they would follow such a delusion. In their minds, they are the governing people of the ROC, based on the land which they were born on. People such as Wu Po-hsiung, James Soong, Lien Chan, these people all believe that they are of the same KMT that was on the mainland. These people were not in power on the mainland, but nevertheless they share the mindset, the psyche, that their home is the Chinese mainland. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:45, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Furthermore, not only is the "delusional mindset" present in the current-ruling KMT government of the ROC, but it is also well known to be well fixated within the higher ranks ROC military, many of whom are closely tied to the KMT. Lee Jye, Tang Fei and Hau Pei-tsun were all bigwigs in the ROC military that came from the mainland. In fact, there are practically no modern-day ROC generals that have specifically publicly displayed pro-Taiwan (as opposed to ROC) sentiments. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:51, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I didn't really ask that, but thanks anyway for the clarification that while it's a "government", their view really is a fringe one. HiLo48 (talk) 07:22, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

How can it be a fringe mindset when the President of the ROC is Kuomintang and the legislature is majority KMT? These are elected officials by the citizens of the ROC. That is a fact that unanimously disproves your assertions that it's a fringe mindset. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.46.142 (talk) 17:33, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

While the the view may be fringe, the reason the view exists is real. The view is that ROC is still the legitimate government of China. The reason some people hold that view is because the ROC government in Taiwan is the continuation of the ROC government that was in China and that government has certain institutional beliefs. (Although the view may be fringe it is notable due to the high-ranking people who hold it. But that's not the issue here. Their view is described in quite a few articles). Readin (talk) 12:35, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

"But it would seem to be a unique aspect. Are there any other examples of what you would call a continuous government for whom the territory it ruled or rules changed completely?" So far as I know the ROC is unique in this respect (at least for non-nomadic long-serving governments with real authority). But its uniqueness does not mean it doesn't exist. It simply makes it hard to fit into the mold that we use for most other governments. In most cases the article about the state and the article about the country are one and the same because the state has never been anything but the governing apparatus for the country. However with the ROC and Taiwan we have a state that used to be the governing apparatus for a different country. It's unique and calls for a unique solution - a separate article that discusses the history of the ROC as one continuous entity that ruled two separate countries, which it is (some may argue that Taiwan and China are not two separate countries but I think you and I at least agree that they are). Readin (talk) 05:40, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I have problems with using the word state to describe something that encompasses two entirely separate places. In my mind and, I'm sure, in the minds of many others, state has irrevocable connections with a single chunk of land. HiLo48 (talk) 07:22, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm perfectly happy to use the word "goverment" rather than "state" to refer to the ROC. Readin (talk) 12:35, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

The only consistent thing about HiLo48 is his use of derogatory language and personal attacks. I say we stop feeding the troll. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.110.141 (talk) 15:38, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

HiLo48 is projecting an attitude that rubs me the wrong way, but at least on this page I don't think it rises to the level of "consistent" "derogatory language and personal attacks" nor is he simply being a "troll". Readin (talk) 21:07, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Readin - the word "government" would definitely be better than "state". (I will ignore the attack. I'm used to people trying to silence me because my views don't conform with the local mainstream ones.) HiLo48 (talk) 21:48, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

(outdent) Apologies for my absence here, I hadn't been watching this page and assumed from the lack of action on Talk:Republic of China that there was no further dispute. HiLo48, I appreciate your views, but you will probably have seen from the discussion that there are other views. I agree with what Readin says above and I am perfectly happy to say that the "Republic of China" is the government and "Taiwan" is the state. However, it is also true that the state we call Taiwan also calls itself the Republic of China. I think this is what the administrators had in mind when they proposed the three part proposal that became the final decision in 2012. If your concern is simply the delineation between the articles, how does this proposal sound to you? For "Taiwan", the definitional sentence will say it is the state which is officially called the Republic of China (which I think is what it says right now), and for "Republic of China" we will say that it is a state which is now known as Taiwan, but this article is only about the government and history of that state? This is close to what it says now, but we can tweak it to make it clearer. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 18:12, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

If I could just add one more thing - as has been pointed out above, the current set-up reflects both the decision of the administrators back in February 2012, and also compromise between editors of almost diametrically opposite viewpoints, as has been pointed out above. I hope we can make tweaks so that this can be, if not ideal, then at least a swallowable compromise for you too, but to reach a compromise we all have to make compromises. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 18:23, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

(Less relevantly), addressing your specific concern about the disconnect between the territories: consider the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which ruled various bits of land throughout history, most of it not at the same time, but it remained the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, even now when it has no territory. The various bits of land it ruled are indubitably separate countries - I wouldn't say Cyprus is Malta or vice versa, just as I wouldn't say mainland China is Taiwan or vice versa. Nevertheless, the Republic of China itsef has continued throughout. In any case, unlike SMOM, the Republic of China (1) inherited the claim for any return of Taiwan from the Qing dynasty, and (2) actually ruled bits of both mainland China and Taiwan starting from at least 1945 and at least well into the 1950s - and arguably even today as it still rules island bits of Fujian. This is just for your information on a different point of view, I am not trying to convert you to this point of view. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 18:19, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

To HiLo48 and other editors here - can I make a proposal? I think the discussions have already come to a point before I started posting here that we can work within the administrators' decision of February 2012, the issue is more the wording (but correct me if I am wrong). To avoid forking the discussion, could we continue on Talk:Republic of China? I am pretty confident that those of us who are more or less reasonable, open-minded and capable of assuming good faith can thrash out the right wording for a stable compromise. Thanks in advance for your constructive contribution. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 19:40, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Change to first paragraph

I reverted this change to the first paragraph but was reverted, so here goes. I strongly object to the change because it places an undue focus on the naming issue and mischaracterises the scope of the article. The article is an overview of Taiwan--the history (though I understand some editors want some pre-1949 ROC history added), the geography, the politics, the culture, not the naming issue or the evolution of the territory controlled by the ROC. I recommend that the old version be reinstated as soon as possible, unless there is clear consensus that the new one is preferred.

For some perspective, the version prior to the change had been stable for some time, and it was the result of prolonged debate and revision among people with different perspectives, engineered to the point where I think it was fairly simple and (perhaps grudgingly) accepted by most editors at this page. I'd hate for the whole thing to subject to rapid back-and-forths again. The introductory paragraph to a controversial article is not a place for being bold. Please discuss changes and gain consensus first. wctaiwan (talk) 12:25, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I think resolution of the discussions in the thread above should obviate any need for changes to the current lead paragraph, so would also urge editors to hold your guns and see if we can come up with a satisafactory solution in that discussion. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:02, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps, but I feel strongly enough about this that I think the previous version should be reinstated in the meantime. I hope that others would agree. wctaiwan (talk) 14:08, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I have reinstated the earlier lead section. Most significantly, Taiwan is not just a name for the ROC. It is in fact a name independent of the ROC, as it also attaches to the island itself. Indeed there are some people that do not recognise the ROC because of its claim to China but still see Taiwan as an independent nation. Will's changes were therefore misleading. John Smith's (talk) 19:43, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, inside the ROC, there is a Taiwan Province; there are areas under the control of the ROC that are outside Taiwan Province, like Fujian Province and the special municipalities. So equating Taiwan with ROC will make it more confusing ("Taiwan Province" as a sub-part of "Taiwan"?). --50.193.52.113 (talk) 21:54, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Our first sentence says that Taiwan is the Republic of China. Our second sentence says the Republic of China, that is Taiwan, was originally based in mainland China. I.e. we're saying that Taiwan was originally based in mainland China. I think we should clarify that it is the government that was originally based in mainland China. How about:

Taiwan (/ˈtaɪˈwɑːn/ TY-WAHN Chinese: 臺灣 or 台灣; pinyin: Táiwān; see below), officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a state in East Asia. The government, originally based in mainland China with no control over the island of Taiwan (formerly known as "Formosa"), now governs the island which makes up over 99% of its territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands.

Readin (talk) 02:54, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I like using "the government" as the subject of the second sentence, but I would drop "with no control over the island of Taiwan" as it's 1. (in my opinion) not important enough for the first paragraph and 2. somewhat confusing to a reader unfamiliar with the relevant history, since it raises the question of how ROC went from controlling only mainland China to controlling only Taiwan without answering it. Either way, I don't feel strongly about this since it doesn't change how the scope of the article is described, which was my main issue with Will74205's edits. wctaiwan (talk) 03:39, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I think leaving out the "with no control over the island of Taiwan" would be misleading since it would be assumed that the government originally controlled both mainland China and Taiwan. I would rather leave readers with a question than with mis-information. However I do think the "with no control over the island of Taiwan" is a bit long and distracting and was reluctant to include it. But I felt I had to in order to avoid giving the wrong impression. I considered simply saying that the government originally "controlled" mainland China rather saying it was "based in" mainland China, however the chaotic nature of the 1912-1949 time-period makes me doubt that such a re-wording would be accurate. Readin (talk) 06:31, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

That doesn't make the statement any less redundant. It's poor writing, because at that moment we are talking about the origin of the RoC government, not about what the RoC initially did not have. If you want to add it, fine, there are other way more proper places to stick that info in, but this is not where you put it in, because again, this article in essence is talking about the political entity of RoC, not the geographical territories of Taiwan. You stick it in as you continue to summarise and introduce the RoC to the reader, that's how to properly write an article, but if you stick it in here, it's extremely poor form. The second paragraph is the best place to do this, as it summarises the history of the RoC (second paragraph needs to be split, as it concurrently talks about two topics). English 101, you focus on one topic in one paragraph, and sentences should be blunt, clear, and concise. You add too much stuff to one sentence, it becomes jumbled and it leads to confusion. You talk about too many things in one paragraph, you start straying off topic. Under this format, it should be this:

First Paragraph = Introduction and outline of the RoC.

Second Paragraph = Brief summary of the history of the RoC.

Third Paragraph = Brief summary of the history of Taiwan (somewhat grayish with this, imo this section should belong in the geography article, as it does not directly pertain to the RoC itself. But if you start it off with 'The islands of Taiwan and Penghu etc etc' it should be okay as a third paragraph)

And personally, I don't think it should be 'initially originated in Mainland China', it should read 'formerly controlling all of Mainland China'. The second part of the sentence describes what the RoC currently controls, it's only logical to make the first sentence describing what the RoC formerly controlled as to make a direct comparison. The alternative is to leave that bit out completely and only talk about the RoC's current territories. Describe the historical territorial administration in the second paragraph. 204.126.132.241 (talk) 15:10, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

This is how I would rewrite the first two paragraphs:

Taiwan (/ˈtaɪˈwɑːn/ TY-WAHN Chinese: 臺灣 or 台灣; pinyin: Táiwān; see below), officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a state in East Asia. The Republic of China governs the island of Taiwan (formerly known as "Formosa"), which makes up over 99% of its territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands. Neighboring states include the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east and northeast, and the Philippines to the south. Taipei is the political capital as well as economic and cultural centre of the Republic of China. New Taipei is the most populous city.

The Republic of China was established in mainland China in 1912 with its Capital in Peking (Beijing). However, the Republic of China quickly fell into a state of Warlordism, with the Kuomintang party establishing their capital in Nanking (Nanjing). It was not until the Northern Expedition lead by Chiang Kai-shek that China was re-unified under Kuomintang control in 1928. During the Chinese civil war, the Communist Party of China founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 and subsequently took over the rest of Mainland China. The ROC relocated its government to Taiwan towards the end of the year, and its jurisdiction eventually became limited to Taiwan and its surrounding islands. In 1971, the PRC assumed China's seat at the United Nations, of which the ROC originally occupied. International recognition of the ROC has gradually eroded as most countries switched recognition to the PRC. Only 11 UN member states and the Holy See currently maintain formal diplomatic relations with the ROC, though it has informal ties with most other states via its representative offices.

The island of Taiwan was mainly inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines until the Dutch period in the 17th century when ethnic Chinese began immigrating to the island. The Qing Dynasty of China later conquered Taiwan in 1683. By the time Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895, the majority of Taiwan's inhabitants were Han Chinese either by ancestry or by assimilation. At the end of World War II in 1945, Japan surrendered Taiwan to ROC military forces on behalf of the Allies. Since then, Taiwan has remained under the control of the Republic of China.

This is how I would rewrite the first two paragraphs. First summarises the Republic of China. Second overviews its history. And Third talks about history of the islands of Taiwan. 204.126.132.241 (talk) 15:29, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

The Communist Party was founded before the Civil War. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.46.140 (talk) 21:20, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I think your proposed text is good. I do have a couple comments about the reasoning behind it though. First, I disagree with your statement that "this article in essence is talking about the political entity of RoC, not the geographical territories of Taiwan". The difficulty we have is that articles about nation-states talk about both - the nation and the state. This article is attempting to do that. The arbitration decision that we could create a separate "Republic of China" article narrowly focussed on the government underscores the fact that this article isn't supposed to be only about the political entity or even primarily about the political entity. The nation is as much a part of the nation-state as the state is. What's tricky about this particular instance is the unusual origin in which that the state didn't start within the nation. My second comment is that I'm not sure how accurate it is to say "formerly controlling all of Mainland China". Did Chiang-Kai-shek actually unify the whole thing? Weren't their areas still under foreign control? Readin (talk) 16:43, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Government != political entity. Government forms one of the basis of a political entity, but is not the entire definition. The current RoC regime as we know it is actually the third of a series of regime changes (Military Government, Political Tutelage, Consitutional). Anyways, regardless, if you reread my proposed text, I had that 3rd paragraph describing the history of Taiwan island for a reason. Instead of splitting hairs, it would be better to just write about both as a whole, however it should also be important to maintain that the two are different (state vs geographical territory). As regarding your second comment, I felt the same, which is why I left it out the mainland part entirely, since it was again, somewhat uneccessary, as the paragraph is describing the RoC as it is now, rather than then, which would be described in the second paragraph. As for Chiang Kai-shek unifying the whole of China, it is generally regarded as so in the sense that all the Warlords were defeated and assimilated under the control of the Central Government. 204.126.132.241 (talk) 23:27, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

My original intention was to clarify that "Taiwan" is a place and the "Republic of China" is its government. So, this is my second try at the first sentence, taking feedback from above:

Taiwan (/ˈtaɪˈwɑːn/ TY-WAHN Chinese: 臺灣 or 台灣; pinyin: Táiwān; see below) is the largest territory governed by the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), a state in East Asia. The Republic of China was originally found and based in mainland China, but now governs the island of Taiwan (formerly known as "Formosa"), which makes up over 99% of its present territory, as well as Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other minor islands.

--Will74205 (talk) 07:18, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, I would say that to be precise, "Taiwan" is the common name for the part of the Republic of China (state) which it actually controls, i.e. the "Free Area" under ROC constitutional law, versus the notional remainder of the Republic of China (state) which it does not control. There is a relevant distinction that can be drawn between the Republic of China (state, largely unrecognised) and Republic of China government (recognised as one even by the PRC, but not necessarily under that name). However, all of these fine distinctions are probably not suitable to be included in the lead of the article without disturbing the original Administrators' decision, which clearly decided to take the broad brush stroke approach of declaring "Taiwan = ROC" for the purpose of describing the polity as it exists today (and leaving the distinction to be drawn in terms of the history and government only). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:58, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I still like the proposed text. Does anyone have a problem with it? Readin (talk) 15:45, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Support the current or Readin's edition, in contemporary usage, when Taiwan is more widely used than ROC in political, governmental and diplomatic situation. And in most of them the term "Taiwan" also covers Penghu Kinmen and Matsu. Like the term "Hong Kong" is not only an island in the above situations today, but also includes Kowloon and New territory.68.181.3.103 (talk) 19:57, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

No, that makes no sense. Both 'Taiwan' and the 'Republic of China' are names for the state. There are many ways of saying this, but as it is in the first sentence is I think fine. It makes no sense to say one governs the other. The Government of Taiwan, governs Taiwan/the ROC, as is mentioned further down.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 22:06, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Taiwan is the place, the state is called Republic of China; that's enshrined in their Constitution. It's the same as America being the place, but the name of the state is the United States of America; that's enshrined in their Constitution. The informal names are not equal to their latter, official names. Greece does not govern the Hellenic Republic, the Hellenic Republic governs the place called Greece. Wales doesn't govern the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom governs a place called Wales (and Scotland, England and Northern Ireland). Ecetera.

Are you then suggesting we rename Greece to Hellenic Republic? Also, yes, they are called the Republic of China, but that doesn't change that the common, if not official, short-form name is Taiwan. That is undisputed. --Golbez (talk) 22:04, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

It is a common name, but it is not, as JohnBlackburne suggests, interchangeable with Republic of China. Republic of China is more than the island of Taiwan, it also includes Kinmen and Matsu. The Kinmenese would certainly take issue with Taiwan being interchangeable with Republic of China; they certainly do not consider themselves ruled by the Taiwanese. Just as the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish would likely take issue with United Kingdom being interchangeable with England. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.78.141 (talk) 22:35, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

"Malta" consists of more than the island of Malta; "Cyprus" consists of more than the island of Cyprus; "Ireland" only consists of part of the island of Ireland. Somehow, the people on those other small islands, or on the part of Ireland not part of the country named Ireland, have no problem with those names. So I'm going to have to say [citation needed] to the people of the other islands not understanding or accepting "Taiwan" as the short-form name for their country. --Golbez (talk) 22:39, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Here's the article on the Kinmenese: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Kinmen

To 159.53.78.141 - According to Wikipedia's policy on common names, Taiwan and Republic of China ARE completely interchangeable. In fact, Taiwan is preferred. For the whole country. Sorry. It's the reality you face if you want coverage in a truly global, English language encyclopaedia. HiLo48 (talk) 22:44, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

For article titles, you are correct. JohnBlackburne is talking about the article text which is a different story.

I was just reading this article, and read all of your posts. I just have one question for Wikipedia: Why does it say that Taiwan is governed by the Republic of China and why does it have the words 'Taiwan Authority' in quotation marks? Also, why does it say in the article, "The People's Republic of China..."? Is it just me, or does the entire article hint that Taiwan is a part of China and mocking Her for stating that She is Her own country? The last time I checked, Taiwan had Her OWN democratic government and president. There is something clearly wrong with that and that statement needs to be removed. Besides, about that political party's members and their thinking on whether they believe Taiwan is a part of China, don't they call themselves TAIWANESE??? That, my friend, is what I call a nationality, which therefore makes Taiwan Her own country. If the day comes when Taiwan is forced to become part of China, or when the Blue Party (Most of you must know what that means, but just in case you don't, it's the political party that supports "joining" China - in short they want Taiwan to be a part of China) signs some treaty/document with China's leader and makes Taiwan part of China; I'll feel bad for the Blue Party president that does that, because half of the population would be in an uproar, including me. Hence, please ask the writer to delete the statement of Taiwan being governed by the People's Republic of China, change the replacement noun they gave Taiwan's government, and delete those rude, degrading quotation marks around Taiwan Authority. J'aime liberte de conscience (talk) 02:37, 25 March 2013 (UTC) j'aime_liberte_de_conscience

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. RudolfRed (talk) 03:26, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

"Kinmenese" as a demonym in the infobox

This was added last night and repeatedly replaced despite my and GotR's reverting it. The demonym in the country infobox isn't used in a general context--it's to describe the people of a country. In this context, "Kinmenese" is not in the same class as "Taiwanese" or "Chinese", either of which may describe Taiwanese people / ROC citizens depending on your POV. I do not dispute that people of Kinmen may not consider themselves to be Taiwanese, but those who don't would consider themselves to be Chinese. In this light, "Kinmenese" is much more like "New Yorker" than it is like either of the other two in that field. wctaiwan (talk) 05:05, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. HiLo48 (talk) 05:09, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Taiwanese is no more of a National identity than Kinmenese. In order for Taiwanese to be national, wouldn't the Kinmenese have to agree with being Taiwanese as well? There are even people on the main island of Taiwan who reject the "Taiwanese" identity. The Taiwanese often complain that the Chinese deny their right to self identify. Why do the Taiwanese deny the Kinmenese right to self identify? The Kinmenese reject the Taiwanese identity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.174.144 (talk) 15:00, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

(ec x2) They don't have to accept the Taiwanese identity. They might be referred to as Chinese or (mistakenly, as you might say) Taiwanese when people talk about people of the ROC, but Kinmenese is not a demonym for people of the ROC in the sense Taiwanese and Chinese are. wctaiwan (talk) 15:16, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Kinmenese is as much as a demonym for the Chinese on Kinmen as Taiwanese is a demonym for the Chinese on Taiwan. Taiwanese is no less regional than Kinmenese. Kinmenese should not be marginalized, it's not representing the facts. The people of Matsu don't consider themselves Taiwanese, neither do the people on Penghu. Only the people on the island of Taiwan consider themselves Taiwanese.

The common name of this article is "Taiwan," however, this article is really about the Republic of China and Kinmen is a part of the Republic of China; this is not an article solely about "Taiwan" and the "Taiwanese". Everybody in the ROC should be represented. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.174.144 (talk) 15:07, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Like it or not, "Taiwanese" is frequently used to refer to the people of the state commonly known, in modern days, as Taiwan, especially in English-language sources. wctaiwan (talk) 15:16, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia should be educating it's readers on all topics relating to it's articles, not just the ones based on popular sources, Wikipedia risks propagating propaganda in that case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.174.144 (talk) 15:19, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

If you folks don't stop edit warring about this "Kinmenese" bit, it will be protected on the wrong version. --Golbez (talk) 15:51, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

For people to say that "Kinmenese" is not a valid national identity within the ROC is as much of a POV as it is for people to say that "Taiwanese" is not a valid national identity within the ROC, and there are 1.3 billion people who think that "Taiwanese" is not a national identity at all. JohnBlackburne says that "Kimenese" isn't accepted as a valid demonym in the ROC; this article itself shows that not everyone on the island of Taiwan believes that "Taiwanese" is a valid national identity. To accept "Taiwanese" as a valid identity and not "Kinmenese" when the people on Kinmen identify as such, is POV. This is no longer an NPOV article: not every voice in the Republic of China is represented. And this article is supposed to be about the Republic of China.

Addendum: Note (d) says: "Although the territories controlled by the ROC imply that the demonym is "Taiwanese", some consider that it is "Chinese" due to the claims of the ROC over all of China. Taiwanese people have various opinions regarding their own national identity." Can we at least have the same note for the Kinmenese? They don't consider themselves "Taiwanese" anymore than the Taiwanese consider themselves "Chinese."

Does anybody regard Kinmen as a nation? This article regards Taiwan as the common name of a nation. It would therefore be weird to regard Kinmen, part of Taiwan, as a nation. Therefore Kinmenese cannot be a national identity, or demonym. HiLo48 (talk) 03:50, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Which country considers Taiwan as a nation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.144.198 (talk) 04:14, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

No idea, but the vast majority of English speakers around the world use the name Taiwan for it, treating it as a nation. That's why the article is called Taiwan. HiLo48 (talk) 04:20, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

The vast majority of English speakers do call it Taiwan and refer to it as a nation. The vast majority of Chinese speakers call it Taiwan Province and say that it is a part of China. As an Encyclopedia, should Wikipedia articles go with whatever is most popularly known in the language it is being represented in? Or should it go by the facts? It's a slippery slope for a multi-language encyclopedia to adhere so rigidly with how the speakers of said language views the material. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.144.198 (talk) 04:28, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, we're on that slippery slope, if you insist on putting it that way. This is the English language Wikipedia. WP:COMMONNAME may be a useful (but frustrating) read for you. HiLo48 (talk) 04:32, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, WP:COMMONNAME applies to titles, not the body of article text. As the WP says:

"Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. The most common name for a subject,[3] as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources, is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural. Editors should also consider the criteria outlined above. Ambiguous[4] or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. Neutrality is also considered; our policy on neutral titles, and what neutrality in titles is, follows in the next section. When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.144.198 (talk) 04:34, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and...? You will need to explain how that supports your case for "Kinmenese" being used as a demonym in the Infobox. HiLo48 (talk) 04:54, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Ambiguous[4] or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.144.198 (talk) 06:07, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Ah well, the key words there are "When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common..." Kinmonese would be close to unknown among the bulk of the world's English speakers. HiLo48 (talk) 06:27, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Taiwanese as a national identity is unknown to the bulk of Chinese speakers. Slippery slope. This article is a joke to NPOV. It's more concerned with propagating the Pan-Green idea that that ROC=Taiwan than presenting the facts. Taiwanese is considered a national identity on Taiwan only and even then not by all the people who live there; within the Republic of China, Taiwanese is no more valid a national identity on Kinmen as Kinmenese is valid on Taiwan. To say that Taiwanese is valid but not Kimenese is POV because they both belong to the ROC. Kinmen does not belong to Taiwan. Kinmen is no more governed by Taiwan than Taiwan is governed by mainland China. Kinmen and Matsu are governed by the ROC.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.40.144.198 (talk • contribs)

There is no POV problem here. You do not understand Wikipedia policy, and are throwing false accusations at people who know nothing of your local political nonsense. HiLo48 (talk) 20:02, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

This is the English Wikipedia, not the Chinese one, so we go by English usage. And in English Taiwan and the Republic of China are synonymous (at least for those who know both names – many just know the common name). One is the common name, one is the formal name for the state. So if Kinmin and Matsu are governed by the ROC they are also governed by Taiwan, and so are Taiwanese to the rest of the world.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 19:06, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Kinmen and Matsu, like Taiwan, are governed by the Republic of China. That's in their Constitution, their own written law. Everything else is politics and POV. Why is Wikipedia trying to define a country's Constitution? Also, WP:COMMONNAME is for article titles. WP:COMMONNAME doesn't apply to article text. Let me help you:

"Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article. The most common name for a subject,[3] as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources, is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural. Editors should also consider the criteria outlined above. Ambiguous[4] or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. Neutrality is also considered; our policy on neutral titles, and what neutrality in titles is, follows in the next section. When there are several names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others.

Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This includes usage in the sources used as references for the article. If the name of a person, group, object, or other article topic changes, then more weight should be given to the name used in reliable sources published after the name change than in those before the change. For cases where usage differs among English-speaking countries, see also National varieties of English below.

Article titles should be neither vulgar nor pedantic. The term most typically used in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms, whether the official name, the scientific name, the birth name, the original name, or the trademarked name. Other encyclopedias may be helpful in deciding what titles are in an encyclopedic register as well as what name is most frequently used (see below)."

Three points... Firstly, please sign your posts. Secondly, If you're going to posts slabs of policy here, you also need to explain how they support your case. It's highly unlikely that many others will read the whole slab, and even if they do, even more unlikely that they will come to the same conclusion you have, whatever that is. Thirdly, right now we have an article about Taiwan. The demonyms we list have to be those that identify someone from that country, not a subset of it. We don't include Texan as a demonym in the United States article, or Tasmanian in the Australia article, even though they are widely used demonyms for the people who live in those subsets of the whole country. HiLo48 (talk) 21:15, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

You need a 4th point that actually addresses the fact that WP:COMMONNAME applies only to article titles. Nothing in the policy says it applies to article text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.46.141 (talk) 22:21, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

No I don't. HiLo48 (talk) 23:15, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Aww man, we're still arguing over this? "Kinmenese" is not a demonym for the sovereign state known as Taiwan/ROC/whatever you wanna call it. The demonym from the United States is not "New Jerseyian" or something. The name of people that come from a specific, local subdivision cannot be used as a national demonym. Why are we still arguing over this? -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 03:21, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Even people from Hawaii are called "American" even though they aren't from the Americas. The are called "American" because "American" is the common name of their country. When was the last time someone said "Obama isn't American" and the response was, "You're right. He's not American. He's Hawaiian." Readin (talk) 13:24, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

David Cameron is English and British; his predecessor Gordon Brown is Scottish and British. David Cameron is not English and Scottish and Gordon Brown is not Scottish and English. The larger question here is about government. England doesn't govern Scotland and Scotland doesn't govern England; they are both governed by the United Kingdom. Kinmen isn't governed by Taiwan, Kinmen (like Taiwan) are governed by the Republic of China. Taiwan and ROC are no more interchangeable than England and United Kingdom.

"are governed by the Republic of China" and the demonym in English of that country is "Taiwanese". Period. End of discussion. You do not have consensus for this change, at all. If you want to get this in you need to move up the chain of dispute resolution. Continuing to edit it in will be seen as edit warring. --Golbez (talk) 18:52, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

That's fine for demonym. If it moves into the body of the article, I will use WP:DR because there is no support for common name usage in the body of the article under WP:COMMONNAME. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.110.143 (talk) 19:28, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I googled for a definition of demonym and the first reliable one (not a Wiki) was http://www.macmillandictionary.com/open-dictionary/entries/demonym.htm

the term used to describe which country or place a person comes from; for example the demonym of Spain is Spanish

Note that it says "the term used", not "the term that should be used", nor "the term that ought to be used". The term most commonly used to describe people from all parts of the Republic of China is "Taiwanese" because the entire state is commonly called "Taiwan".

Whether or not people from Kinmen should be called "Taiwanese" along with the rest of their countrymen is of course debatable. In some people's minds both Taiwan and Kinmen are part of China and the name "Republic of China" is correct so that the proper demonym is "Chinese" for people from both Taiwan and Kinmen. Others would argue that "Republic of China" is an anachronistic holdover from a time when the government ruled a different country, and that since mainland Taiwan makes up nearly all the territory of the country "Taiwan" is the more sensible name and "Taiwanese" the sensible demonym. But we don't need to have that argument. We just note that people from the Republic of China are called "Taiwanese" more often than anything else even when people from Kinmen are being included. Readin (talk) 04:41, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

President Ma Ying-jeou and First Lady Chow Mei-ching are at the Vatican to attend Pope Francis' investiture. The dignataries are seated alphabetically by country. President Ma and the First Lady are seated between the President of Chile and the President of Costa Rica. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.110.143 (talk) 21:38, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, because the long-form name is Republic of China (or China, Republic of), and that is uncontroversial and has nothing to do with the short-form name. Just like how North Korea is in reality the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. They shouldn't be seated at N, they should be seated at K. --Golbez (talk) 21:44, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

The short form name of Republic of China is China. Taiwan is the common name. Taiwan /= Republic of China. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.46.143 (talk) 15:59, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

The demonym 'Kinmenese' is wrong because 'Kinmen' is not the common Chinese name, which would be Jinmen; nor the common English name, which would be Quemoy. Quemoyian, Quemoyese, Jinmenese or bust! Shrigley (talk) 00:39, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

FIRST EUROPEAN CONTACT

The first European contact of record was by the Portuguese in 1582. In 1996, the Portuguese Mint struck coinage honoring this event. It seems that the Portuguese were the first Europeans to "explore" by ship the Asian regions, starting with Maluccas (1511), Spice Islands (1512), Siam (1512), China (1513), Timor (1515), Australia (1522/5), Japan (1543), Macao (1557--which was finally "ceded back" to China in 1999!) and finally, Taiwan (1582). I mention this as the Portuguese government and mint struck coinage commemorating these events. The pace of Portuguese/Spanish exploration and colonization was slowed by wars, specifically the Anglo-Dutch Wars which led to the establishment of the Anglo and the Dutch trading companies (aka East India Companies, etc). Dutch contact with Taiwan was technically not the first contact, but since my ability to briefly mention first contact by the Portuguese, this will have to be done by an editor so authorized to amend this Wiki article.Charley sf (talk) 23:59, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Agree. "Formosa" is Portuguese, not Dutch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.110.143 (talk) 18:10, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Replacement MAP

Can we maybe get a properly proportioned map? That doodle looks like a kindergarden drawing; hardly a research tool, as it took me ten minutes to even identify what continent's coast it was supposedly running away from. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.195.123.238 (talk) 02:56, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

...what? Perhaps you might want to brush up on your geography. Ansh666 02:19, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I honestly do not see what the big deal over the map is; it looks fine to me. You can clearly see mainland China and the Indochina peninsula. Not only that, there's a miniature world map thrown in there as well. Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 07:43, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

People's Republic as a "neighbor"

Hello everybody. I'd like first say sorry that I am really new here and I am not quite familiar with some rules. Please do notify me when I made some mistakes, thanks very much. I'd like to make one change to the First Paragraph by changing 'PRC' into 'Mainland China' because on the perspective of Taiwan's authority, there is no PRC and of course PRC should not be addressed as a country. And, on the other hand, on the perspective of PRC and many other countries, Taiwan is part of PRC and PRC should not be addressed as its neighbor. So, I propose to change the political name 'PRC' into 'Mainland China' which is acceptable for everyone. What do you think about this? Chinacxt (talk) 04:01, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not have to have an account which is "acceptable" to the relevant politicians. Each of the governments claims to be the government of both mainland China and Taiwan, but the objective reality is that each of them actually governs only part of the territory. The Wikipedia article should reflect reality, and not pander to the unrealistic positions held by either or both groups of politicians. JamesBWatson (talk) 08:17, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much for reply. It's good to reflect reality and I agree with this. However, I still propose the change. Let's put this in this way, which one of 'PRC' or 'Mainland China' is closer to the reality? Using 'PRC' will bring ambiguity while using 'Mainland China' is neutral and absolutely right. So, I believe that Mainland China is a better choice. What do you say?Chinacxt (talk) 08:28, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

What you are calling mainland China is known on Wikipedia by its English common name of China, just as we have an article called Taiwan. I find it frustrating when the content of any of these or related articles drifts off into someone's political preference for naming, rather than the common names in the English speaking world. That approach will never work. HiLo48 (talk) 08:53, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for reply. I understand your frustration and I am frustrated as well. I am not sure about Mainland China's implication in the whole English speaking world but on the wikipedia, the page Mainland China does not refer to PRC but refer to the mainland in a very geographical way. And, I learned from previous post that the 'reality' here matters. Even if the mainland China do mean PRC in the English world (which is not right), I do continue to propose this naming change to reflect the reality. But this is not a big deal actually, I will give up if more people don't agree with me. Chinacxt (talk) 09:10, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

That's like saying that we should rename the United Kingdom article "Great Britain" or "England" just because a lot of people in the English speaking world might call it that way. --50.193.52.113 (talk) 00:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Add me to the list of people who think this is a bad idea. The current situation, objectively, is that the effective territory of the PRC neighbours the effective territory of the ROC. In that light, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the PRC is a neighbour of the ROC (commonly known as Taiwan). This article describes the ROC as a state, so for listing neighbours, the PRC (also a state) is more appropriate than mainland China (a geographical concept). If you're going to go by what's "acceptable" to the PRC, half of this article should probably be deleted as blasphemous lies about something that hasn't had legitimacy since 1949. I am glad that's not what we do here. wctaiwan (talk) 10:57, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Ok, then, I give up. Since it seems like that everybody knows what is the fact and I believe there is actually no meaning in changing this any more now. To clarify, I do not intend to go by what's acceptable of PRC or many other countries although I am a PRC's citizen. What I want to do is basically describe the fact in a neutral way since only the 'green' side in Taiwan wants to address the neighbor as PRC and nobody else in the world actually wants to do so (officially) except some foreigners who don't care about this. I thought nobody will disagree but it tuns out to be nobody agree. Anyway, I give up. Sorry for troubling you. Thanks. Chinacxt (talk) 11:08, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 2 July 2013

Allow me to preface by saying that I apologize in advance if there is something wrong with my request; I don't frequently post in talk pages. While it is true that this article is potentially inflammatory (due to the country's disputed political status) and Wikipedia has a policy of maintaining neutrality, I think that it may be useful to note that while Taipei is the country's political center and de facto capital, the state's de jure capital is Nanjing. I don't believe that this would represent a bias towards one side in the political dispute, especially if placed in this context (as in the introduction of the article), and adds information, if slightly. Lastly, I would like to say that I vehemently disagree with the previous user's suggestion that Republic of China should direct to another article, as that is the country's official name and the hat note makes the alternative articles readily accessible.

I disagree that Nanjing should be given any sort of prominence outside a historical context, as it's of no particular significance in the contemporary ROC, either in practice or in discussions about the political future of Taiwan. wctaiwan (talk) 09:37, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

So, what the country's laws actually say don't matter at all? --50.193.52.113 (talk) 01:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The reality matters more than the laws. I suppose one could create an entire article describing discrepancies between laws that define the political structure of the ROC and what actually happens in practice, but such laws should certainly not be given much weight when you're talking about contemporary ROC. (And if zh:中華民國首都 is right, then it doesn't look like the argument that Nanjing is the de jure capital is well-supported either.) wctaiwan (talk) 02:17, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Reality of course matters more than laws, but laws matter too, and the fact that they have a de jure capital different from their de facto capital should be noted. Of course, you then say that may not be the case, and I don't know, I'm just commenting on the nature of de jure. :) --Golbez (talk) 13:35, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 29 May 2013

Suggest to add the following to the further reading reference section:

Clark, Cal and Alexander C. Tan. 2012. Taiwan's Political Economy: Meeting Challenges, Pursuing Progress. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

202.36.179.100 (talk) 10:31, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Done with this edit. Thank you. Begoon ^talk 16:25, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

General Chen Yi.

Why is there no mention in the article that the first KMT Governor was actually a Communist agent whose murders of local people were designed to undermine Republic of China rule (to try and swing the population in the direction of the Communists). He was later executed for his crimes - a fact which is not mentioned in this article either.94.5.89.3 (talk) 18:06, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Nanjing as capital

The source cited for the change says "the head of the ministry’s K-12 Education Administration Division, Chiu Chien-kuo (邱乾國), said that during the Period of Political Tutelage (訓政時期), it had been mentioned that the capital of the nation was Nanjing, but there was no such mention in the Constitution after its ratification" and "the part in the ministry’s document mentioning Nanjing did not provide a detailed explanation, for which he extended his apology, saying he was willing to assume responsibility for any administrative lapse". Given the controversy this has apparently generated, I don't think it's unreasonable to treat the instruction with a grain of salt, and wait until the dust has settled to make a claim one way or the other (and as I have said in the past, this simply isn't lede-worthy information IMO). wctaiwan (talk) 01:30, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. The matter is confusing and I added a chapter about it for those who wonder why various sources give different capitals.Drieakko (talk) 01:44, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Guys, the instruction was thoroughly derided (even by members of the pan-blue People First Party), after which a Ministry of Education official basically retracted the claim (see this interview: "When talking about the capital, we quoted documents that were too old [emphasis mine], and did not give a comprehensive explanation. The entire official document was too simplistic in its explanation, and we'd like to explain and apologise for causing the controversy.") Can we not assign so much credibility to one single document even the government itself apparently regrets (to whatever degree)?

Furthermore, the new section contains a fair bit of synthesis--I recognise that I'm not neutral in this issue (though I make a conscious effort to not let my views colour my edits), but "based on Nanjing's status as the capital of ROC before the evacuation to Taiwan and lacking any later decision to change the capital, Nanjing continues to be the official capital of Taiwan" is OR unless there's a source that this is the consensus--and my understanding is there simply isn't a consensus (which leads to the government's equivocal quasi-retraction). wctaiwan (talk) 23:02, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The Minister of the Interior has said "since Taipei is the seat of our central government, it is our nation’s capital."[3] The Minister of Education has made a statement to the same effect and said that a correction would be issued.[4] (link is in Chinese) I'm going to remove the new section. No objection if someone wishes to rewrite a short, well-sourced section documenting the history of the question. wctaiwan (talk) 06:06, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with wctaiwan; that sounds sensible. Frenchmalawi (talk) 15:00, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Reader feedback

I was looking at the reader feedback, and no less than three comments complain about the fact that Republic of China directs to this page. The hat note is obviously not enough. The lemma should direct to some place more appropriate, either Republic of China (disambiguation), Republic of China (1912–1949), or History of the Republic of China. Kauffner (talk) 16:19, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

The main fact is that, the Government of the Republic of China which is situated in Taipei, rules the Kinmen and Matsu of Fukien/Fujian province, and Tungsha islands of Kuangtung/Guangdong province, Taiping island of Nansha islands of Kuangtung province (Hainan province in the classification of PRC). There is not point in redirecting Republic of China to Taiwan.--✉ Hello World! 07:58, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Editor Sl that it was a mistake to change the article to "Taiwan". The ROC has a proud and impressive history. All that is ignored in this decision. Frenchmalawi (talk) 15:15, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Percent of Taiwanese aborigines by townships of Taiwan

Where I get Percent of Taiwanese aborigines by townships of Taiwan?--Kaiyr (talk) 17:03, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

There's some oudated data (end of 2012) at [5]. [6] has more recent and detailed statistics, but they are only available in Chinese. (For future reference, this kind of question is better for WP:Reference desk.) wctaiwan (talk) 18:19, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 May 2014

This is National Anthem of the Republic of China official version

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:National_Anthem_of_the_Republic_of_China_official_version.ogg

File:National Anthem of the Republic of China official version.ogg

Original on WIKI is MIDI version

Please change to official version. Thank a lot S54780478 (talk)

 Not done Sorry, this version may not be used because it is not "free enough" for our needs (we require that content be licensed for any purpose, not just non-commercial use). I have also nominated the file for deletion. wctaiwan (talk) 12:47, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 March 2014

Please change: officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a state in East Asia. to: officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a country in East Asia.

also, please change: Neighboring states include the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east and northeast, and the Philippines to the south. to: Neighboring countries include the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east and northeast, and the Philippines to the south.

According to the mandarin original text in the Taiwan Wikipedia page, Taiwan is a country and not a state. Also people's republic of china, Japan, Philippines are not states, they are countries.

see below: 中華民國是位於東亞的民主共和國[參 9]，為亞洲現有最早實行共和立憲制度的國家[參 10]，成立於1912年1月1日，於1971年前被廣泛承認代表中國[注 11]，現今因主要國土位置或政治因素而被通稱為「臺灣」[參 2]。 67.121.104.204 (talk) 10:48, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

 Not done

I think you're confused in regards to the definition of state. I see that you live in California, United States, which furthers my assumptions. There is more to the word "state" than the "US state" (e.g. Texas, Missouri, etc) definition; a sovereign state is a political entity that we call Canada, or Serbia, or Cambodia. With this definition, China, Philippines and Japan are "states". The terms "state", "nation" and "country" refer to concepts which may be similar, however still have their small distinctions. In order to avoid ambiguity, it's better to refer to objects such as China, Japan, Britain, Russia, the United States, France, et cetera as sovereign states, instead of the two alternative terms. A sovereign state is largely defined in modern contexts based on Westphalian sovereignty, whilst the definitions of nation and country differ depending on various contexts.

I wouldn't put too much thought on what the Chinese Wikipedia says on this issue. The Chinese language, like all languages, has its limitations in that there is no one-to-one correspondence with English political vocabulary. The English words "state", "nation" and "country" are all translated as "國" in Chinese, as Chinese does not make such a distinction. The Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of China is called "中華民國國防部" (國 = nation), the United Nations is called "聯合國" (國 = nation), the United States Department of State is called "美國國務院" (國 = state), the Commonwealth of Independent States is called "獨立國家聯合體" (國 = state), and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is called "石油輸出國組織" (國 = country). --benlisquare_T•C•E 11:02, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Category

I have moved the category Category:Former member states of the United Nations from this article to a redirect, Republic of China (1945–71), in order to remove any implication-by-categorization that the ROC was ever a member of the UN under the name "Taiwan". Yes, this article is about the Republic of China, but when the ROC was in the UN, it was not referred to as "Taiwan" in the UN, and the ROC claimed to be the government of all China, and the UN implicitly regarded it as such. So I think the change helps avoid any confusion on the matter. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 19:35, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

The article makes it pretty clear that it is about the Republic of China (see first sentence of article). Your concern appears to be that the article is titled "Taiwan" instead of "Republic of China", which might result in confusion. At what point did it become not okay to say that the ROC used to be a member of the UN? Was it back in February 2012? That seems like an extremely arbitrary line to draw.

What is the point in moving the category to a newly-created non-existent page (a redirect) for the sake of non-implication-by-categorization, when it just directs to "Taiwan" anyway? Why not redirect it to Republic of China, especially since given that the category already says "former member states", adding in specific years is actually unnecessary? -Multivariable (talk) 20:39, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the idea first promoted. It is wrong to list the Republic of China as a former UN member. That is simply not true. China (then named ROC) was a founding member of the UN. It is still a member (although now named PRC). Like Libya, the country had a civil war. One side won and renamed the country PRC. Calling the ROC a former member is like calling the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya a former member. Civil wars happen routinely; and ex-governments styling the country by a different name don't get listed as "former members". Of course, the China seat is a fascinating complicated story. Frenchmalawi (talk) 15:13, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

With respect that is not true what you're saying. Following your wording the Republic of China isnt a nation and doesnt exist nor is it China. The ROC still exists and IS China and so is the PRC (sadly). The ROC controlled the seat of the UN even after they lost mainland China to that communist terrorist/dictator and mass murderer Mao Zendong. --85.119.106.82 (talk) 14:02, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

User talk:85.119.106.82, with respect, you are absolutely free to express your opinion. A factual statement, no opinion about it, is that the aggregate population of the countries that do not recognise the ROC as a modern day sovereign country make up well over 99% of the world's population. So, your opinion, is a minority one. Frenchmalawi (talk) 03:49, 18 April 2014 (UTC)