Talk:China/Archive 3

message: I don't understand why the sentence: 
* "The PRC is home to over 1.3 billion people, which makes it the largest country on earth in terms of population."
was changed to:
* "The PRC is home to over 1.3 billion people, which makes it the largest economy on Earth in terms of population."
Hong Qi Gong 23:01, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The changed version doesn't make sense to me.  Also, it's very awkward to say "largest country by population".  "most populous country" or similar is better.  --Vector4F 05:59, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I edited it.  See what you think.  --Hong Qi Gong 06:05, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Largest country vs. largest economy? 

message: I changed the line that says the PRC claims Taiwan as the "23rd province of the PRC" to "a province of the PRC". The reason I did this was:
*the PRC does not rank its provinces. Taiwan is not alphabetically or phonetically the last province according to the administrative divisions of the PRC. 
*It was not the last province to be claimed or established, even though it may be the only province which has never been administered by the PRC
*labelling Taiwan as "23rd" may be POV because it passes judgment on the validity or otherwise of the PRC's claim of the territory.
*the information as to the number of provinces of the PRC is contained elsewhere.
Thus "a" province is more accurate and NPOV, albeit less poetic. --Sumple (Talk) 09:42, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  changed 23rd province to "a" province 

message: Why is the PRC flag pink?  The red in the emblem and the red in the flag is different in the article.  They should be the same color.  There's something wrong with the color parameters used for the PRC flag. 128.135.224.149 19:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  resolved Nishishei 06:01, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flag color 

message: The article needs a massive overhaul to maintain its featured status. Reduce images, summarise content, add more references, reduce lists and unnecessary sections. See India, Australia, Bhutan and Nepal for reference. =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree. You are from India and obviously biased. The India article has more images per text than the PRC article, the India article is also less informative, and appears more chaotic (see its topics lists) and amateur (like the Indian food photo in Sports and Games section in the India article). Additionally, the Australia article is very similar to the PRC article in both use of images and its summarization. Nishishei 05:50, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do not make personal attacks against any user in wikipedia: (See Wikipedia:No personal attacks). In what way is it less informative? The India article is a summary of a lot of points. See the geography section of the China page. It's littered with images. The Economy section needs to summarise the main points of the Economy of the People's Republic of China. There is no food photo in the sports section, it must be an issue with very high resolution screens. =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:34, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  No one has made personal attacks toward you, please review what constitutes a personal attack.  It is your opinion that the India article is better than the PRC article. You have provided no concrete points, but arguable generalizations, and hence you were told by Nishishei that your comments are biased and without basis.  The PRC geography section has SMALL pictures that complement the section of the article very well, and emphasizes the diversity of China's terrain; small images also have shorter load times.  And I agree with Nishishei, on my computer too, the Indian food on leaf photo in the India article is indeed in the sports section. Very disorganized.  Many computers in the US run on high resolutions. Naus 17:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  You are from India and obviously biased smacks of a personal attack. We in wikipedia always ensure that the article is viewable at the standard web resolution: 800x600. I've made my comments on the FARC. No need of duplication. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:39, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why is everybody so centered around the images? As images are not prerequisites for FA status, then I don't see why all of this discussion should just focus on images. In addition, this discussion isn't here to say why the article India is bad. There are several additional suggestions given by Nichalp for the FARC. AndyZ t 21:18, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The focus on images is because it was the first point Nichalp made. Likewise the focus on India was brought about by Nichalp himself. 67.175.245.110 06:01, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

text:  I agree with Nishishei. The PRC article definitely deserves its featured status. --141.213.196.250 06:30, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured article 

message: I've listed this article under WP:FARC as it no longer meets the Featured article criteria. No one seems to be interested in maintaining the article. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:34, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed this listing, please discuss here first before making wanton moves. The article is maintained on a daily basis by many users as revealed in the history.  You have blatantly ignored the comments made by others toward your suggestion and unilaterally made your own listing. Naus 18:02, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I reverted and added the  - it is not up to the decision of a single individual whether or not an article deserves featured status. AndyZ t 21:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  FARC 

message: * I noticed that the "summary" in the sports section of this article is more like the whole sports article itself, therefore, I suggest that there be only a link to the sports article in the section. --Ryz05 04:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: update: I changed the Sports section according to my suggestion.--Ryz05 04:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Those games can go in the sports section, especially in the second paragraph on traditional chinese sports. They also deserve to be mentioned in the Sports in China article.--Ryz05 01:55, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sports section improve suggestion 

message: There seemed to be some surprise when I commented that I found reading this article depressing. There was argument and debate. It was asserted that the article had been improved. We were invited to reread. I think it would be inappropriate to comment at length on the FARC page so here is my very preliminary view on second reading. I regret that I did not get past the first introductory paragraphs:
"Since its founding in 1949," /so this would be the de facto stabilisation after the cessation of hostilities. What is the process of "founding" a state? Has it not been normative for the "founding" act in public international law terms to be de jure recognition by other states? It is arguable that the state was not founded as such, but acquired a form of international legitimacy through the passage of time from 1949 onwards. But the phrase clearly needs considerable explanation/"the PRC has been led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) under a one-party system. Though constitutionally a socialist state/sorry to be dim but what does that mean? You say that a communist state has a socialist constitution? I think you should explain your terminology so that we can all understand what the implications are./"the PRC privatized"/so the state privatised rather than the Party? and what was this privatisation? Who owned what in this communist or socialist state and therefore had the right to sell? And who had the money (in a communist state, would private capital not be illegal?) to buy and what happened to the money?/"nearly half of its economy"/can you sell an economy or half of it? I thought you could only sell property, whether movable or immovable./"in the past three decades"/starting in the 1970s, somebody has sold half of the economy, but at which value? There would have been a valuation of the economy when the first sales were made in 1970. Thereafter, both the public and private economies would have grown. . . This needs serious explanation/"under "Socialism with Chinese characteristics." /is this a quote we can attribute? Is this how the Chinese themselves described their own system or is this an external value judgment, whether free-standing or perhaps as a translation of the Chinese but selecting Western words? It presupposes that there is something objectively identifiable as "socialism" and that this set of political norms was given a particular interpretation or application by the Chinese. Is this the result of the PRC being a communist state with a socialist constitution that you referred to earlier?/"Nonetheless, it"/this it is the Party?/"retains significant political control over the remaining state-owned enterprises and the banking sector."/so the banking sector was never state-owned, presumably because banking would be a capitalist venture? But the Party controlled it by regulation and informal mechanisms?
My deepest apologies, but this is all really depressing. David91 18:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: David91, I think if one were to follow through with your suggestions in explaining every sentence about the PRC and its current status in the intro, the introduction would be far too long. Besides, anything that is still unclear can be read from the links that are provided in the intro under each world, such as "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" (read that for clarification), or click the link economic reforms for further details. Hope that satisfies you. --Ryz05 02:41, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Sadly the link to "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" is worse than useless because, in part that is even more POV than this page. But we are talking details here. The issue is not with individual words or phrases. My view is that the whole article needs to be completely rewritten and that, until a reasonable standard has been achieved, the page should no longer be considered FA. David91 02:55, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  So the intro is fine? Or should there be more details? To me, it has the right length and any other details can be read from the provided links by clicking the highlighted words. Also, I don't think the whole article needs to be rewritten, but maybe some parts can be cut down for clarification. If you seek perfection in an article, you won't find it anywhere. --Ryz05 03:04, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

text: This is distracting me from other matters which have a higher priority for me at this time. But I will say this. No. The intro is not fine. The whole piece needs to be completely rewritten (which requires inter alia that it be restructured). I do not think the introduction needs to be more than two or three sentences at most and they should be completely uncontroversial. You then need to decide in what order to take the topics so that the whole piece has a logical flow to it. As it stands, it is incoherent without any sense of structure. Once you have decided upon the structure, you can see the order in which you need to introduce and explain the concepts. Thus, if you decide to begin with the issue of when the PRC actually came into being, you can explain the concept of de facto as opposed to de jure recognition in a proper context without muddying the sectional element with constitutional issues. And so on. I said above that you and all the other dedicated people working on this page should take time to reflect calmly. As it is, you are making ad hoc changes without any sense of where you are going and what you are trying to achieve. I acknowledge that this is difficult for all, so I will leave you to make whatever changes you deem appropriate without further more detailed input from me. My health is beginning to fail and I have other things I wish to complete before I am unable to write any more. David91 04:10, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is an encyclopedic article, not an academic paper determined to be objective and nuanced on the most minute level.  Concepts such as varying perspectives of socialism or capitalism are introduced in the PRC article in a manner identical to every other featured country article (like say the India or Hong Kong articles). Targetting specifically this article as if it is somehow an exception to other Wikipedia articles is quite unfair.  The very nature of Wikipedia guarantees that ad hoc changes dominate complete structural rewrites.  This is not a specific problem unique to the PRC article. If there is a flaw, it is a systematic flaw of Wikipedia. 69.213.138.57 04:27, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

text: This article is an FA. It has been suggested that it is not good enough. I have made comments intended as constructive advice on how to improve the quality so that it can remain an FA. I am not interested in a comparison with any other page for this purpose. For all I know, those pages may not be FAs tomorrow. But, to answer your specific point: if someone writes that a state is "communist" but it has a "socialist" constitution, I have problems in understanding why it was initially described as "communist", etc. Finally, whether one is writing for Wiki or writing the copy to go on the back of a pack of breakfast cereal, people judge the quality by whether it has a flow, i.e. by whether it is structured and coherent. David91 09:50, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It should also be of appropriate length, staying tightly focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail. But explaining how a state is founded... not exactly Wikipedia:Summary style. AndyZ t 15:50, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Well, you did invite me to reread this

message: A few editors seem to be working hard on the article. Here are my suggestions on how to go about in touching this article up:
#Start by reducing the page size. The history and economy section are large and can do with some précis writing. Ideal size of a country article 35-40 kb. (I've done many country and city article in the past and they can be comprehensive with such a page size)
# Follow the headings and suggestions as per wikipedia:wikiProject countries
# Cite sources as its being rewritten. Where have you sourced the content from? All facts and figures quoted should have inline references.
# Obtain free images and remove the non-free ones from here.
---
# Copyediting and NPOV check comes much later
Best of luck! =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:41, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried to reduce the economy section, which resulted in some edits for the better.--Ryz05 06:30, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Thank you AndyZ and others for all your help in improving this article!--Ryz05 22:28, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have edited all the sections of this article for clarification and fixed some grammar. So I have pretty much completed my job.--Ryz05 06:30, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Glad to see Nichalp has revised his opinions. --Sumple (Talk) 23:53, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions 

message: Article states that "but India has not included it in any discussion about a settlement to the Kashmir dispute, effectively ceding it to China."  Some good references are required before making such statements. --Blacksun 21:25, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Aksai Chin

message: Because of pressure to be a Featured Article... the current PRC article has been castrated.  I would much rather prefer a constantly UPDATED and INFORMATIVE country article than a two-line summary article linking to specific articles that are pieces of crap and rarely if ever updated.  The article two weeks ago was great, the history section (especially on the extent of reform, and possible backlashes) was nuanced and accurate. 
See the Germany and United States articles for detailed, good quality stuff.  I am particularly impressed with the United States article.  Look at their economy, geography, politics, culture sections.  Like a REAL ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY. 
The Wikipedia country template is a sham, only like 4-5 country articles in the world have actually followed it so far.  I don't see why country FA articles have to follow this piece of crap template. 
- JakeLM 22:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current article castrated because of FA status..... 

message: Science and technology section is currently focused too much on space and Shenzhou....  We need a summary of other aspects, including the government's recent emphasis on science and technology (see Jiang Zemin's "Three Represents"). There are other things we must summarize such as stem cell research, pebble-bed nuclear reactors and alternative energy exploration (biogas, fusion, etc).  The photo of the model of Shenzhou I appears to be a hobbyist's creation, not the official model, I would prefer another more general sectional photo (like the brand new and awesome Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology) in its place. Thanks. JakeLM 20:09, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  science and technology section 

message: Thank you to all those who contributed in this article by offering help and suggestions! Now, it reads and looks so much better than before. A special thanks to AndyZ for many important citations, JakeLM for the discriptive images, and 67.175.245.110 for suggesting and expanding on the Science and technology section while providing much needed reference information. Now that editing is pretty much done, I'm ready for a wiki-break. --Ryz05 13:02, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My extended thanks also! AndyZ t 00:56, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A thank you to all who helped 

message: I changed "Deng never became Party Secretary or State Chairman himself" to the more accurate "Deng was never head of the Party or State himself". Deng was briefly Party Secretary under Mao, but back then Party Secretary was not the highest leader in the Party. --Sumple (Talk) 23:52, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deng's positions 

message: I've deleted non-specific web links (as in, links to a general site and not to specific country information) from the references section. But I have left in the People's Daily and the China Daily links because they provide a Chinese perspective balancing the more Western references - Please replace these with specific links or references as they are found. Thanks. --Sumple (Talk) 05:46, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Purging references 

message: Although I agree with AndyZ's decision to combine the short human rights section with an otherwise fairly short Politics section, I suppose it be better to add a paragraph about the structure of the PRC government under Politics, while moving all that's about censorship to a new human rights section.--Ryz05 20:58, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I moved the censorship into a new subheading. Censorship is an issue with human  rights, so its inclusion was natural.  I have seen other pages with similar formats, and it seems appropriate. More info on political structure would be good. --banta 22:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Human right section 

message: I find it odd that this article cites the CIA factbook for population figures when the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics has published its own census figures. (Here's a link to the information in Chinese.) I would assume that the NBS's figures would more reliable than the CIA's, & using them would strengthen this article. -- llywrch 23:00, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I never knew you could read Chinese. Anyways, it's hard for me to read and understand, so perhaps someone else could do that job of replacing the CIA's data with that of the Chinese website.--Ryz05 01:20, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  the 2005 figures are a 1% sample analysis, not a census. --Sumple (Talk) 11:22, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion 

message: China is unique in that the city (or municipality) administration is the most important and cited administration, not the region, province or county. Chinese dialects are also commonly referred to by the city name, not by the regional nor provinical terms. Much of China's economic growth is coming from the key cities. United States, Russia, Mexico, Iran, U.K., France, Spain, Poland, Colombia, Argentina, and Germany all have largest city lists.  Of that list 5 are the top 10 highest GDP nations. Naus 03:28, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the suggestion. I only removed it earlier to the List of cities in the People's Republic of China because someone suggested that the article would be better without them. However, they are important to the Chinese economy and serve an important role in Chinese culture.--Ryz05 03:34, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I think such a section will improve the article. One quibble: In the table included below the non-municipal cities have their provinces indicated in brackets. The meaning of this may not be immediately obvious to someone not familiar with Chinese provinces. Perhaps a separate column or some other indicator of the nature of these names? --Sumple (Talk) 10:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've fixed it.  How does it look now? 68.252.233.187 14:30, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Looks good! --Sumple (Talk) 02:42, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, it looks awesome! Thank you! Hope you can sign up for an account (which I did when someone accused me of being an "anonymous coward").--Ryz05 04:29, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I've recalibrated the pixels of the pictures, now they look a lot better. --Ryz05 04:31, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Petition for the inclusion of largest city plus 3 skyline photos section 

message: The People's Republic of China has dozens of major cities, including 3 global cities of Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. Major cities in China play key roles in national and regional heritage, culture, economics and politics.
 
The figures ranked below are the 2001 estimates for urban populations within administrative city limits Compiled by Thomas Brinkhoff, City Population, http://www.citypopulation.de, data from official PRC estimates for 2001; a different ranking exists when considering the total municipal populations (which includes suburban and rural populations)Zhongguo 2000 nian renkou pucha ziliao (transl: 2000 China population census resources), Beijing: Zhongguo Tongji Chubanshe (transl: China Statistics Press), 2002. 
Rank	City urban area                      	Population(2001 est)<Br>millions	Municipality limits(2000 census)	Municipality limits(2000 census)	Region
Rank	City urban area                      	Population(2001 est)<Br>millions	millions                        	density (per sq km)             	Region
1   	Shanghai <Small>municipality</small> 	9.838                           	16.74                           	2,640                           	Eastern
2   	Beijing <Small>municipality</small>  	7.441                           	13.82                           	822                             	Northern
3   	Hong Kong <Small>SAR</small>         	6.112                           	7.01                            	6,294                           	South Central
4   	Tianjin <Small>municipality</small>  	5.095                           	10.01                           	803                             	Northern
5   	Wuhan, Hubei province                	4.489                           	8.31                            	947                             	South Central
6   	Guangzhou, Guangdong province        	4.155                           	10.15                           	1,337                           	South Central
7   	Shenyang, Liaoning province          	3.981                           	7.20                            	557                             	Northeastern
8   	Chongqing <Small>municipality</small>	3.934                           	30.90                           	378                             	Southwestern
9   	Nanjing, Jiangsu province            	2.822                           	6.40                            	970                             	Eastern
10  	Harbin, Heilongjiang province        	2.672                           	9.35                            	174                             	Northeastern
* above Municipality population and density source: Zhongguo 2000 nian renkou pucha ziliao (2000 China population census resources, 中国2000年人口普查资料), published Beijing: Zhongguo Tongji Chubanshe, 2002
*Sources for population density:
#Shanghai
#Beijing
#Tianjin
#Guangzhou
#Chongqing
http://www.chinatoday.com/city/a.htm --Ryz05 11:36, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've recalibrated the pixels of the pictures, now they look a lot better. --Ryz05 04:31, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Largest cities

message: 1. Given that almost all the references are used in the notes section, can they be combined?
2. The notes section (a very long section) frequently cites the same source multiple times. Is there a way of reducing this list by combining such references into one line? --Sumple (Talk) 11:04, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you want instructions on how to do it, see :meta:Cite/Cite.php. enochlau (talk) 12:03, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Take a look at footnote number 19- that is an example of how such a doubled source would probably look like. In addition, I don't think (at least I hope, considering I added many of the footnotes!) any of the citations in the notes sections are doubled. As for combining the two sections, I've seen combinations like Photosynthetic reaction centre#References; I guess we could also find specific statements to verify by those references and convert those references instead to footnotes. Thanks, AndyZ t 20:58, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes and References 

message: Foreign relations section can definitely be cleaned up a little.  Too much detail and kind of chaotic.  In fact the main article Foreign relations of China is more concise and to the point than the PRC main article's section.
:: Removed details on the territorial disputes (that list was originally very disorderly...), and added a link that lists all the territorial disputes in detail. Also added Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Naus 00:29, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Foreign relations section 

message: Congratulations for all those that made a contribution to this article and kept its featured status! I see this article as simply excellent; an example of what a country article should look like. It's just so fun to read and look at. Cheers!--Ryz05 03:11, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah! and thanks especially for Ryz05 for his tireless efforts. --Sumple (Talk) 11:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Congratulations to all editors!

message: Hi, I think that a small change could greatly improve the flow of the article. The see also currently at the end of sections would be less invasive if they were put in a topics box at the end of the article, see Singapore and Australia for examples.--nixie 06:12, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the suggestion, I don't think the "see also" at the end of certain sections is invasive in any sense. If people want to learn more, they can just click them or if they don't, they can just move on. A topic box unnecessarily lengthens the article and is not as clean as just list a few links under the "see also" section at the end.--Ryz05 18:07, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A suggestion

message: Anybody got the balls to say something about the millions of people murdered by this government?
Anyone?
:Sources?  Or would you rather Wikipedia be written by emotional tirade?  TastyCakes 16:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Genocide 

message: It's not right to have a single sub-section by itself, and Sports is pretty short. Therefore, it should be combined into Culture section. There's nothing wrong with that.--Ryz05 t 22:12, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sports section combine with Culture section 

message: the communism privacy forced to stop the blog tibet to force take the steel to help to kill government us as a chinese.
Uh, maybe it is just me, but I am not even going to attempt to decipher this. (Majin Takeru 01:09, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A disgruntled Tibetan watchmaker?? --Sumple (Talk) 01:26, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  chinese government knew any watches.