Wikipedia talk:WikiProject China

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Chinese sources

Currently, there's an issue regarding how to reasonably use Chinese historical sources. I also frequently use many Chinese sources like Shilu for characters or events that cannot or have not yet been found in English materials. Min968 (talk) 05:39, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There was a short discussion on a very similar topic 10 years ago at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chinese history/Archive 1 § Direct dynastic histories citations. I'm glad that you brought this up Min968, because I had been thinking about raising it for discussion too. I suppose my personal thoughts, in a very small nutshell, are that Chinese historical sources should not be used to establish notability and used sparingly for verification. Rather, more modern (20th & 21st century) scholarly sources should be used, and if they do not exist, we should not have an article on the subject. Mainly because articles based on historical sources often tend to be essentially translations of primary or near-primary source material, veering dangerously towards original research. I'd be interested in hearing others' thoughts. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 08:59, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are policies about this. WP:PRIMARY: Ancient histories are primary sources, and any statement they make needs interpretation by modern scholarship, which is what we should cite. WP:NONENG: That scholarship need not be in English (and clearly most of it won't be in this case) though if there are English-language sources of equal quality and relevance, they are preferred for the English-language Wikipedia. Kanguole 09:42, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I tried raising this at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 479#Asia, but got a rather unclear response. I suspect asking folks unfamiliar with Chinese historiography to opine on this issue without much context is not the best way forward. If we go for a project-wide RfC, we should provide sufficient context in a "Background" section, and allow for a range of options to be discussed. These should include separating notability from reliability, as SunloungerFrog has done, and discussing potential carveouts (see below).

Though I would like to review the scholarship on this some more, I am fairly amenable to allowing citations of the traditional histories, because as far as I can tell historians generally accept their tellings of events at face value outside of certain topic areas. Examples of potentially problematic areas include: sensitive political scandals and palace drama like the Xuanwu Gate incident; the level of success faced in certain battles, especially against "barbarians", which Chinese sources tend to exaggerate; and of course numbers, which the Shiji is famous for using very...abstractly. Also, these histories tend to have certain biases about their own dynasty and the one immediately preceding theirs, especially the later emperors thereof. For example, was Yangdi really so evil, or is that just a Tang invention? I think if we ask editors to tread more carefully in some areas while generally allowing their use, we can improve coverage of Chinese history using these sources while avoiding many of their potential pitfalls. Toadspike [Talk] 03:24, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I think discussion of the "Veritable Records"-style sources could be bundled with revisiting WP:SILLOK due to the very similar method of compilation (though perhaps the Chinese ones are less reliable). Toadspike [Talk] 03:40, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are clearer answers at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 475#Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty, and that is for a more recent and well-thought-of example of the genre.

Your list of examples can be extended indefinitely. That is why we need modern scholarship to interpret these sources. If modern historians accept some accounts at face value, we should be citing the modern historians. Kanguole 09:39, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is also a reasonable argument. But the status quo is that 1. zhwiki contains a vast body of articles based largely on these sources, which well-meaning editors regularly translate into English and 2. well-meaning editors also write articles based primarily on these sources directly on enwiki, which leads to fiascos like the recent AfD of Princess Changde. For these sources to be discounted as primary or unreliable (whether for notability or reliability) would likely be a departure from the status quo and thus require a strong consensus in favor. Which again makes me think that we need to seriously WP:RFCBEFORE any concrete proposal before putting it forward. We may also want to consider incremental steps, rather than going for "are these reliable yes or no" all in one go. Sorry if I'm talking in circles; I really don't want us to rush a proposal and end up with yet another no consensus close. Toadspike [Talk] 11:26, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To walk the walk, here's a rough draft of a potential guideline wording: East Asian dynastic or traditional histories, such as the 24 Histories, Zizhi Tongjian, and the Veritable Records of the Ming and Joseon, should be used with care. As they may contain bias, exaggerations, and fabrications, editors should cite modern scholarly commentary on these sources wherever possible, and not use them for exceptional claims. Toadspike [Talk] 11:33, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the current framework of WP:EXCEPTIONAL does a good job at encapsulating my exceptions from above. No people descended from bears and birds or million-casualty battles cited to the Shiji alone, but leaving "boring" biographical details etc. intact. Toadspike [Talk] 11:35, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that use of these sources is pervasive in East Asian historical topics (and for other parts of the world too), and that it was done in good faith, but that is not a reason to declare the area exempt from a core site policy (WP:PRIMARY, part of WP:NOR). That is not what WP:EXCEPTIONAL says.

Non-experts face difficulties in accurately interpreting these sources at every level, starting from whether a particular character in the received text was what the author intended, what the semantic range of a particular word was in the author's time, what people or place a particular name referred to at that time, and all the way up to the larger questions you mention. There are modern scholars who make these things their life's work, and for good reason. Those are the sources we need.

I am not suggesting that all of this material be immediately excised. I am suggesting that we acknowledge that this is a problem, and say what the direction of travel should be, i.e. to the same standards of sourcing expected (but not always achieved) in the rest of WP. Kanguole 12:53, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the nod to avoiding mass excision. That is my main worry.

Re: primary – it's not clear that these sources are primary. Even though the footnote at WP:PRIMARY includes "medieval and ancient works, even if they cite earlier known or lost writings", that is not supported by any of the definitions given, Wikipedia or external, and based on the RSN discussion I linked may be mainly aimed at European sources. Some of the later works aren't even medieval – to declare the Ming Shi "primary", we would have to really stretch all reasonable definitions of "primary", including that unsupported "medieval" footnote line. But if it isn't primary, and doesn't substantially differ from the other 24 Histories, we have a consistency issue. I suppose we can throw this up for an RfC to answer, but I doubt it'll produce a conclusive result. I think it's easier to just admit these sources aren't ideal ("high-quality") and use EXCEPTIONAL. Toadspike [Talk] 14:42, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Translations on police units

There's yet to be real consensus on the translation on some chinese police units(in terms of civilian police);

1: 分局

Different sources use different translations; the National immigration administration website and shanghai government websites(and several others), translate this to "branch"; meanwhile, in shenzhen government websites(along with the police stations in shenzhen themselves, though i can't use that as it would be WP:OR) typically translate this to "subbureau". What should be the standard translation for 分局?

Always use branch
Always use subbureau
Depends on location and sources

2: 总队

Possible translations:

Department (per [1] and [2]; both sources are about shanghai police though)
Force (per [3] [4], both are beijing though)
Unit (per [5])
Corps (per Supreme people's court [6], and state council of china [7])
Command (Per civil aviation administration of china [8])

3: 支队

Possible translations:

Detachment (per [9], [10])
Branch (per [11])
Division (per my old translation, using US police departments; division is the official translation for 处 though)

4: 大队

Possible translations:

Team (previously used translation)
Group [12]

5: 中队

Not used as common, so less articles on;

I used to translate this to "Squad" though Thehistorianisaac (talk) 13:24, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For 分局, maybe it would make sense to use local terminology (e.g. branch for Shanghai articles, subbureau for Shenzhen articles) and defer to the National Immigration Administration's terminology for articles with a national scope. For added clarity, articles can use language like branch (分局, also translated as subbureau).

I wouldn't worry about making the translations match US police usage. The US is just one country and its police aren't necessarily organized with the same terminology as other English-speaking countries.

IMO the most important thing is to give readers enough information to clarify a term's meaning if necessary. So for all five of these terms, we should provide a wikilink or Chinese characters, or both, on the first usage in any article. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 19:01, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So for 分局, use branch except for in the case of shenzhen, where subbureau is used?

As for the others, depending on situation;(fyi, what I previously did was Unit for 总队, Division for 支队, Team for 大队 and squadron for 中队) Thehistorianisaac (talk) 06:45, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

more intrestingly, corps was used by the state council in regards to a shanghai psb unit

http://english.scio.gov.cn/pressroom/node_9016184.html Thehistorianisaac (talk) 15:23, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for asking me to comment here, Thehistorianisaac. I generally agree with Mx. Granger that it's okay to follow the official translations used by each bureau, even if they differ from each other and from US practice. The Chinese characters or article link are key. I do think it's best we choose a translation for each term for cases where there is no official translation; I will look into this some more and reply later. Toadspike [Talk] 03:43, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok thank you! Thehistorianisaac (talk) 03:44, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed solution

Based on advice received, evaluation of sources and translations, here is my proposed solution:
分局: Translate to branch in most circumstances, subbureau should only be used for shenzhen
总队: Use corps per NIA and supreme people's court unless local bureau has different translation for said unit(e.g. Department for shanghai special police department, command for the china air marshal command etc)
支队: Use Branch in most circumstances(per supreme people's court official translations), Detachment for border management or cases like "1st detachment, 2nd detachment"
大队: Use Group in most circumstances per supreme people's court
中队: Use squadron per previously used translation

Thehistorianisaac (talk) 03:44, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Mx. Granger@Toadspike any opinions on the proposed solution? Thehistorianisaac (talk) 02:14, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks fine to me, with the caveat that we should leave the option open to use other local translations where applicable (for instance, we might discover other cities besides Shenzhen that translate 分局 as subbureau). As mentioned above, we should provide links and/or Chinese characters for any of these terms that might be unclear to readers. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 07:26, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wei Jie

This article was deleted 20 years ago. I think that the scholar (b. 497 CE) might be notable. What do you think? Bearian (talk) 02:00, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bearian: Do you have the Chinese characters for this person's name? It's hard to look for Chinese sources without them. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 06:56, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that it is 韋節, based on this. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 07:39, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly. Bearian (talk) 08:44, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ROC Information gap within "[x] of China" articles

Not sure the exact policy that resulted in this, but I believe I've identified a knowledge gap present in several articles related to Chinese history. Specifically, an article like Cinema of China will be based around the PRC (as "China"). This is reasonable, I would say, for information involving the period after the Chinese revolution, at which point the Chinese mainland came under control of the Peoples' Republic. However, many of these articles, such as the one linked, Mass media in China, Radio in China, and Media history of China have either no information, or only extremely minimal information, about the subject prior to the 1948 revolution. Some of these articles link to the Taiwan-equivalent article for ROC information. However, these articles typically, when describing the pre-1948 situation, discuss Taiwan specifically, such as Cinema of Taiwan describing the cinema of Japanese-occupied Taiwan. This is of course, reasonable; if "China" became synonymous with the PRC upon their taking control of the mainland, it stands to reason that the ROC was "China" during the Nanjing Decade (not to mention that they did not control Taiwan for most of this time). Further, some of these articles do contain information about pre-PRC history with regards to, e.g., the Qing dynasty.

With this in mind, I'd like to add more information about the period from around 1911 to 1948 to these "...of China" articles, based on an understanding that China during this period was synonymous with the ROC (and various warlords, etc), and that "...of Taiwan" articles both do not and should not describe the situation in China during this period. Let me know if there's anything I should familiarize myself with before doing this. PaulRevered (talk) 16:24, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the top-level "of China" articles should cover the Republican era and even earlier (Qing) when possible. In a similar vein, @Generalissima recently pointed out that many ROC government institutions should probably be split into pre- and post-1949 versions. Toadspike [Talk] 03:55, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Alcoholic drinks in China

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Alcoholic drinks in China#Requested move 19 September 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Toadspike [Talk] 12:38, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Overseas Chinese § Requested move 10 September 2025

An editor has requested that Overseas Chinese be moved to Chinese diaspora, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 18:21, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Liu Xiang (hurdler)#Requested move 15 September 2025

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Liu Xiang (hurdler)#Requested move 15 September 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. veko. (user | talk | contribs) he/him 15:39, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

paper.people

Looking at Wang Yi and I see this story in which he writes a speech for Hu Yaobang. Now I am unfamiliar with the source but it appears to at least of some level of party approval. The source is already used to verify When he returned to China in March 1994, Wang was appointed as vice section chief of the Asian section of the foreign ministry and was promoted to section chief the next year. From August 1997 to February 1998, Wang was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Foreign Relations of Georgetown University in the United States. I am thinking to add more detail to the article but I am unsure of how this source should be used. It is possible that the story about him writing a speech is completely made up. I do not think there is anyway to verify that. However, maybe an attributed claim that is a bit more vague works like When interviewed in 2016, former colleges stated that he quickly gained recognition for speech writing. Czarking0 (talk) 05:27, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From this same source I see the phrase "党叫干啥就干啥" which could potentially be one of those slogans that makes a worthwhile article ? Czarking0 (talk) 04:22, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Czarking0 That phrase is worded very informally (wikt:啥 is a colloquial contraction of wikt:什么, which itself isn't very formal), so I am surprised to see it being used as a slogan. A brief web search doesn't turn up any excellent sources, but I haven't looked very hard and you may yet find some. I'm guessing this is a phrase that turns up sometimes in party-related documents, but won't be used much in very high-level, formal, official settings. Toadspike [Talk] 17:25, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am confused by your idea of formality here though maybe it is a good one. WP has articles like 6-7 (meme) which indicate informal phrases are included. I think the relevant guideline for this would be WP:WORDISSUBJECT. I have not seen sources for 党叫干啥就干啥 that would lead me to believe it passes this guideline though I also have not looked far. Czarking0 (talk) 00:53, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I'm not saying that we're not allowed to have articles on informal words. In fact, I rather appreciate articles like that! I meant that since this phrase is informal, it's unlikely to have much high-level party endorsement, and thus also unlikely to have enough coverage to meet the GNG. Toadspike [Talk] 07:56, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I also see "王毅对群众工作也很重视". I curious about this term "群众工作" which google puts as "mass work". I assume this related to the mass line which has a section about the revival under Xi. First, I want to see what people think is an appropriate translation of 群众工作. I certainly have no problem calling it mass work since that is basically a literal translation; however, in English this is a meaningless jargon phrase. If one can say that 群众工作是习近平的群众路线. Then I think it would be ok to say mass work and pipe link it to mass line. Potentially this means the mass line page should say some more about this term. Czarking0 (talk) 05:15, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Yangtze#Requested move 25 September 2025

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Yangtze#Requested move 25 September 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 11:14, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Retooling the organization of Cinema of China and History of cinema of China

Hello all,

At present, Cinema of China features historical information up to around 1910 and then jumps to the post-cold war period, with all historical information between being condensed into History of cinema of China. There are several issues with this, IMO, not least that "history" does not have some arbitrary expiration date. In keeping with the general way most articles that have an [x] and [History of x] pattern, I'm going to be adding a more cursory overview of all the history to Cinema of China, retaining History of cinema of China as a more in-depth page. PaulRevered (talk) 17:23, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese names in infoboxes

WT:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#Chinese names

Editors may wish to contribute to this discussion. — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 18:03, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Talk:People's Publishing House (China) § Requested move 19 October 2025

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:People's Publishing House (China) § Requested move 19 October 2025. Toadspike [Talk] 17:13, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Would anyone care to finish Draft:Nanko Historical and Geographical Society?

The article is finished, well formatted, etc. The topic is notable. But it is a translation of article from zh wiki, which contains copyvio text. It needs to be rewritten to eliminate close paragphrasing of the source cited. Would anyone care to help? (It is an article transalted by a student of mine few months ago). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:55, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Piotrus Which source in particular? Toadspike [Talk] 12:59, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Toadspike Based on comments at talk: https://history.nju.edu.cn/02/ee/c28628a459502/page.htm _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:17, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I missed the talk page discussion. I will take a look when I have time. Toadspike [Talk] 23:16, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discusstion "Two concepts are totally different." at Talk:China (region)

There is a discussion which is about redirect to Greater China at Talk:China (region) that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. SoAnnoyedToName (talk) 14:59, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed deletion of Mi zhi hu lu

The article Mi zhi hu lu has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Tagged as Unreferenced for almost 5 years. No other language has a reliably sourced article from which to translate. WP:NOTHOWTO.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Bearian (talk) 20:31, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Xinjiang task force

Anybody else interested in forming a task force for topics related to Xinjiang / East Turkestan? Yue🌙 23:00, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a not strong area of interest of mine but I highly recommend China and Russia for this topic. Czarking0 (talk) 03:01, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]