"For earlier material see Talk:China/old

Hi, I've edited the China/Temp page:

 restored the table per the WikiProject Countries page
 put in a ""disclaimer""
 move the brief history of China into the section for history

Although I have rewritten some of the text, I think I have not really touched it's contents. Roadrunner, Fred, what do you think?  00:52 Aug 3, 2002 (PDT)

It's less objectionable, but I still have a small problem with it.  The basic problem is that is seems to imply the the PRC ""owns"" say the history of Tang Dynasty.  Also,
it doesn't really take into account current events.  One of
the things that the PRC government has been doing in the past year has been to ""delink"" the concept of the PRC from the concept of China.  You can see this in the response to Chen Shuibian that was issued today where the PRC was
went out of its way to avoid identifying the PRC with China.

I'll probably drop out of the discussion for a few days and
let other people comment (as well as try to articulate better what still bothers me about the page).

 User:Roadrunner

 Ok, we're moving towards a solution, so that's good. As for the Tang dynasty (though I think you mean it more genral), I think that Taiwan did not form part of the Tang empire. Anyway, there's nothing against mentioning the Tang dynasty at Taiwan as well.

 We may indeed specifically include (in the history? header? ""disclaimer""?) that the PRC avoids linking its name to China. Then again, it may de-link it formally, but all those people around the world will continue to associate the two. 

 I'll await your remaining problems with the contents, confident we'll end up with an article that satisfies the both of us (and, hopefully, ""everybody else"").  13:07 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)

Guys, after reading this tedious list of conversation, my sugguestion of the best way out of the naming convention of China is using those by native speakers of Chinese. As a native speaker of several dialects of Chinese, I make the following table which should help: 

How native Chinese speakers refer to:
Speakers from
Mainland China
Taiwan
HongKong
Macau

Referring to China (Mainland)
China
Mainland (daliu)
Mainland or Zhongguo Daliu (chong-gua-da-lok in Cantonese)
Mainland

Taiwan
Taiwan or Taiwan Province (the more official tone)
Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan

China (the culture etc., non-political issue
China
China
China
China

Most Chinese, regardless of where they are from, care less about the naming convention but some Taiwanese (like my buddy who is gonna marry next month) DO NOT WANT Mainland China to annex Taiwan and had bad impression on Chen Shuibian.

KT2

 Knowing what the Chinese call it is certainly interesting, but what is important is what the English-language people call it. 

I'm with Jeronimo. I also thought all of this already had been resolved  China should be the main article of the PRoC. It doesn't matter what they officially call it or want it to be called. English speakers call it China in overwhelming numbers. This is also the conventional short form used by the CIA and the UN and we have decided that that is what we will use for country names here. If we don't stick to that then we are expressly taking sides in political naming issues. The fact that the PRoC is currently trying to dissociate their government from ""China"" (which seems counter intuitive for a totalitarian regime..) is an interesting thing to mention in the article on the PRoC at China. If we change the name of the article to follow political correctness of the PRoC that is an express act of support for their policy. I for one say we defer such naming matters to higher authorities such as the CIA Factbook, the UN and especially what is most commonly used by English speakers. True they are POV institutions but transcribing what they use is a passive and not express act of POV. Wikipedia is not in the business to decide what the names of nations are  other institutions are far better suited at this highly charged topic. I also think the disclaimer is way too long and bold should be replaced by italics. Any article on the PRoC sho