palaceguard asks is it up to us to decide whether china is or is not one of these culture civlization nation not state we have to describe china so we do have to decide for each of those meanings whether there is a china we do have to decide whether there is a chinese culture to describe we do have to decide whether there is a chinese civilization to describe we do have to decide whether there is a chinese nation or perhaps to describe and if all of these exist and we discover that despite overlaps there are significant distinctions between them we have to decide whether to try to jam them all into one article a nearly impossible task as we've seen or to put them in multiple articles and if we put them in multiple articles we have to decide if one can be said to be the most common usage and thus the page first reached for china or whether more than one are equally primary and thus like america and britain the first page for china should be a disambiguation page as an american the primary meaning of america is clear to me but i have to face the reality that plenty of people around the world think differently and some are even offended when we americans call ourselves americans those who think china always means one thing to all people need to face the reality that many reasonable people around the world seen clear distinctions between chinese culture chinese civilization and the political entities that use china in their names there is nothing to be ashamed of in those distinctions it points out the success of china as a civilization and culture smaller countries cultures and civilizations generally don't have these distinctions because they didn't control other territories didn't have their culture adopted by others and didn't spread civilization