Talk: China

Categorization

It seems to me that grouping the story categories together makes the links easier to use. ML4E 02:18, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

You mean, list the stories first, then everything else? You might be right. I've been thinking we should do some rearranging in the categories.

I'll use China for what I have in mind. TR 05:18, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

It's kind of sad. China fits into so many categories, and yet, the article isn't particularly subtantial. HT needs to write more Sino-centric material. That's all there is to it. TR 23:17, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

ItPoME and T2G

The additions by the anonymous poster seem a little speculative. I don't recall Japan surpassing Germany in ItPoME and the retention of the NAU kept Britain a world power in T2G. What do you think TR? ML4E 05:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I remember Germany was going to start ripping off Japanese computer tech. But we had no evidence of Japan's economy surpassing Germany's overall. TR 05:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Gladiator

That doesn't make much sense. If the PRC was strong enough to secure its own future, it was strong enough to extend its influence over other Asian communist governments, maybe even enough to build a bloc of its own. It also had good friends outside of Asia--Hoxha, for instance, though he got pissy when Zhou received Nixon. (Albania for the US--talk about trading up, huh?) Beijing would be looking for any opportunity to exploit discontent among Soviet satellites, and they'd have very good luck if they could get a sane government that didn't alienate all its natural allies. Moscow couldn't claim global hegemony while the PRC is a going concern.

As is, I suppose you should add "China is the lone country to maintain autonomy in the face of a global empire" to your little Common Themes page. Turtle Fan 13:45, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Flags

I realized that thanks to many of the short stories the KMT no longer dominated the PRC in number of HT stories, so I wanted to put the two flags on equal footing. If someone can come up with a way to resolve the current aesthetic issues, more power to you. Turtle Fan 18:22, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Other than adding some (barely) relevant historical text, I think that's the best we can do. TR 18:49, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah.

You know, one thing is starting to annoy me about Asian history: the way historians refer to the KMT, Daehanminguk, South Vietnam and so forth as "nationalist"--which is correct--and then make the communist governments with whom they compete for their country seem anti-nationalist. Nationalism and communism come off being diametrically opposed. But, with the exception of a few Stalinist stooges like Horloogiyn Choybalsan, and I guess whatever collaborators Mao found to run Tibet for him, I can't think of a single Asian communist who wasn't also a rabid nationalist. Certainly none who could be remotely considered leaders in the establishment of communism as an organically Asian political phenomonon, as opposed to someone else's bitch. In Europe there were enough communists who still believed in anti-nationalism that it could have validity there, and everyone outside of the USSR except Tito had no chance to be nationalist since communism=Soviet bloc. But in Europe, where you could indeed speak of communism and nationalism being opposed, you don't. Turtle Fan 21:18, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I've not really experienced this. Indeed, I've noticed the opposite--many recent historians seem to emphasize the fact that Mao, Kim (to an extent) and especially Ho were nationalists above all else. TR 21:44, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Kim Il-Sung was most definitely a nationalist. He cut his teeth in Manchuria when Daehanminguk's government-in-exile coordinated resistance from there. With the exception of collaborators, every Korean political figure from the farthest possible right wing to the farthest possible left wing, and from Geumgangsan in the far north to Hallasan on semi-tropical Jeju, cooperated on that one. It's actually rather moving to read accounts of such radically different people all working toward a common purpose, even though you know they were at each other's throats soon enough.

And Jong-Il is even more nationalist. South Korean government and society have unkind things to say about the hereditary enemy, but watching and reading Northern statements on the subject would leave you ready to swear on a stack of Bibles that they're as bad now as they ever were under Tojo.

By the way Kim Il-Sung is at official state functions (he's still head of state, you know, and will be for all eternity) invoked following a very long list of titles. "Great Leader" is the first one. "Vanquisher of the Japanese" is the second.

Historians rarely attempt to pretend that Asian communists weren't nationalists. Some Marxist historians do, but most wring their hands over how the revolution has been betrayed. I've never had anything by a legit historian that didn't show Asian communism for what it was, first and foremost a reaction against imperialism, except of course in Mongolia and Tibet.

The problem is, you often see the Republics of China, Korea, and Vietnam described as nationalist in their ideology. While that has some validity, it's frequently extended to portray Chiang's, Rhee's, and Ngo's battles with Mao, Kim, and Ho as clashes between nationalism and communism. The communists were at least as nationalistic as the nationalists, but when you call use terms like "nationalist" in lieu of "anti-communist," it's very hard not to imply that "communist" means "anti-nationalist," no matter how little water that holds. The impression is reinforced even more strongly for anyone who has familiarity with the Manifesto and knows that long before communism was operationalized its intellectual architects deluded themselves into thinking that nationalism was the anti-communism and thus communism did indeed have to be anti-nationalist.

The Cold War was an ideological clash and East and Southeast Asia saw its largest violent expressions. So historians try to understand them in ideological terms. The problem is that, beyond republicanism, which if it can be defined as an ideology at all is clearly an ideology to which neither Chiang nor Rhee nor Ngo nor anyone else in that vein subscribed to, the only ideology that really shines through for the republics is nationalism. You can't even say they were all rightist or rightish--the KMT was fairly leftish, more so both then and now than the CCP is today. Turtle Fan 02:49, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Weren't they all capitalists? Maybe that should have been the collective ideology applied to all those governments. Barrel Nagurski 00:50, December 7, 2010 (UTC)

Capitalism is just a way of organizing (or perhaps declining to organize) an economy. It's not a political theory at all, let alone one comprehensive enough be called an ideology--despite certain American politicians promoting and "defending" it against imaginary threats with the kneejerk, uncritical dogmatism of the ideologue. Turtle Fan 02:24, December 7, 2010 (UTC)

The Curse of the Three Dragons

What is The Curse of the Three Dragons? An idea for a short story he had and abandoned? That section has been up there for years and it's never been written. Turtle Fan 05:00, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

It was published in the mid 1990s in something called Arabesques. We might as well delete the section. We have no reason to expect it to be reprinted anytime soon. TR 00:00, June 15, 2010 (UTC)

The title always piqued my interest. Turtle Fan 00:30, June 15, 2010 (UTC)

Form of Government in TL-191

Is it really worth pointing out? If it's not in the series, I don't see how it's relevant. Especially when we consider how inconsequential China's role is. Turtle Fan 17:18, June 25, 2010 (UTC)

My travels of the internets are leading me to believe that HT readers want to be spoon-fed shit like this. TR 02:04, June 26, 2010 (UTC)

Really? Jesus. I mean, I can understand wishing HT gave more information--I wish that myself all the time--but wishing we would explicitly say "HT did not give us more information"? Why would anyone want that? Turtle Fan 04:54, June 26, 2010 (UTC)

China during the Second Great War

What side of the Second Great War did China join? The Entente or Central Powers? I doubt they would have remained neutral, as Japan was invading northern China. 24.147.1.197 19:31, September 21, 2014 (UTC)Jacob Chesley

I don't think they were affiliated with either side. They were just at war with Japan. TR (talk) 23:26, September 21, 2014 (UTC)

PRC and RC Articles

We might want to consider writing separate articles on China's competing governments in preparation for BA. Such articles would have been relevant to some past stories, but I imagine they'll be much more central in the new saga. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:25, January 12, 2015 (UTC)

Really? I can't think of a story where the RC was relevant. Formosa of course, but not the Taiwan government. But, yeah, we're going to have to have at least an RC article--I'd argue the China article may be enough for the PRC (much as we don't have a Third French Republic, etc.).

Well the KMT/RC line does get blurred a lot, but I would argue that the RC has been relevant in Worldwar, MwIH, and a little bit at the beginning of TWTPE. PRC, less so, now that I think of it; the only reference that I can think of to it (as opposed to the CCP which controls it) is in GotS, when Lee, Davis, and Seddon were trying to puzzle out the AK-47's real origins. But that's definitely about to change.

And The Gladiator--PRC was relatively important. To be clear, when I said RC I meant a rewrite of the Formosa article into a Taiwan one. TR (talk) 21:55, January 12, 2015 (UTC)

Ah yes, The Gladiator. Forgot about that.

The thing with Formosa/Taiwan is, the Taiwanese constitution maintains that its RC is the same RC that was founded by Sun Yat-Sen in 1912. Apart from some ceremonial trappings like the celebration of October 10 as Taiwan's national holiday, this has been largely considered a legal fiction since the early 90s; however, it was taken very seriously prior to that point, especially in the period HT is about to explore. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:19, January 13, 2015 (UTC)

But the thing is, the two Chinas were on opposite sides of the Korean War, and are certainly going to be on opposite sides of the monster war that grows out of it. And both will surely feature prominently, at least in BA; the action may move away in later books. So if we roll everything into this article, we'll have a very long section that winds up talking about two different governments' actions as they unfolded simultaneously. Sounds messy.

If we do an article on the Republic of China, and another article on the "real" China, we'll be well outside what I'm sure will be the spirit of the story. Nowadays everyone thinks of the PRC as the "real" China, even those who want good relations with Taipei; but in the 50s, while the PRC was in total control of the mainland (which could of course change if its army takes a Castle Bravo or two on the chin), but diplomatic legitimacy was really seen as an open question and depended almost entirely on which side of the Cold War divide you fell on. Certainly the story will have it as two competing governments, and privileging one over the other in that way seems unwise to me. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:22, January 12, 2015 (UTC)

Based on the summary, we're probably going to wind up with articles for East and West Germany as well. We're also going to have to have a fun time with the respective characters by country categories for the Germanies, the Koreas, and perhaps even the Chinas. TR (talk) 05:21, January 12, 2015 (UTC)

So we'll have two separate articles on the two German governments, and we've already discussed plans to have two separate articles on the two Korean governments. At that point, following the same policy with the two Chinese governments has the added advantage of consistency. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:22, January 12, 2015 (UTC)

Reading over what we have here, I think what we could do is new articles on PRC and RC and then use this article for events that occurred geographically in mainland China. The current Korea article has references to North and South Korea which we could also do for East and West Germany. ML4E (talk) 20:54, January 12, 2015 (UTC)

Korea's a work in progress pending the release of BA; we may fundamentally change it when we're writing up that book. But yes, that's a good model to follow. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:19, January 13, 2015 (UTC)

That may be the way to go. Leave the sections related to the imperial period (such as they are), the vague republic in 191, the T2G British protectorate, and the various foreign occupations (Japan, the Race, etc) in "China", and then move the PRC related sections to a proper PRC page. TR (talk) 21:55, January 12, 2015 (UTC)

I like this as well. Anything that happened in imperial China, in an occupied/colonized China, or in an ATL or future during which the nature of the Chinese government is vague can stay here. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:19, January 13, 2015 (UTC)

Restoring the PRC Flag

Thanks, ML4E. Obviously my removal of that one was inadvertant. Turtle Fan (talk) 18:05, June 11, 2015 (UTC)

Thought so but wasn't 100% sure. ML4E (talk) 18:07, June 11, 2015 (UTC)

"Nobody calls it the RC."

That simply isn't true: http://www.allacronyms.com/RC/Republic_of_China And the parallel structure of People's Republic of China/PRC (it is true that nobody says PROC) should make it clear that those who do are in the right. I don't want to get into an edit war, but RC is correct. I'd sooner see the full name spelled out in every instance than "ROC." Turtle Fan (talk) 17:58, November 11, 2015 (UTC)

Shrug: http://www.allacronyms.com/_military/ROC/Republic_Of_China. I read ROC much more frequently than RC. ML4E (talk) 18:12, November 11, 2015 (UTC)

Sure, it's out there, and I'll even concede it's more common; but that doesn't make it correct. The common practice is to exclude prepositions from acronyms (ie, USA, USSR, ISIS, and most germanely of all, PRC). Why should this be an exception? Turtle Fan (talk) 18:25, November 11, 2015 (UTC)

Roll it back. TR (talk) 19:20, November 11, 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. :) Turtle Fan (talk) 19:44, November 11, 2015 (UTC)

China in The Disunited States of America

I can understand that China wouldn't exist as one unified country and would be several different counties. However, I'm pretty sure that the Europeans (British, French, Portugeese) Russians, and Japanese would've carved up China into colonies first before being given their independence. --75.68.122.13 20:00, May 15, 2016 (UTC)Jacob Chesley the Alternate Historian

Guns of the South

Take a look at the Lit. Comm. Do we keep it or cut it down or leave it? ML4E (talk) 23:10, November 8, 2019 (UTC)

The main section makes clear it is PRC produced. Worrying about the history and how we know is just showing off. TR (talk) 00:19, November 9, 2019 (UTC)

Agreed, Turtle Fan (talk) 06:15, November 11, 2019 (UTC)

OTL section

For what it's worth, I vote that the OTL section receive minimal trimming, given China's extensive and complicated history. TR (talk) 03:00, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I believe the very last paragraph is redundant but otherwise I'm content to leave well enough alone. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:19, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I think the last paragraph is needed to bring the history of China to the present day. I am unsure why TF thinks its redundant although it probably needs some tweaking. I dislike the phrase "as of this writing" and think the narrative should be generalized to remain unchanged. If circumstances change, then the article can be updated. ML4E (talk) 16:20, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I think it's redundant because the previous paragraph already explains the historical difference between the two Chinese governments, and I can't think of any present-day references to China in the HT canon that have anything to do with the One China Policy. "As of this writing" is problematic because 2015 was a long time ago now, and if we were to update it to 2024, it would end up dated again soon enough. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:21, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Looking over the last two paragraphs, I think the last sentence in the second last paragraph should be incorporated into the last paragraph and generalized to remove the "as of this writing". The final paragraph can explain the situation from the PRC winning the civil war (second last paragraph) to the slow shift in recognition of the PRC over the RC and the present, potential flashpoint over Taiwan. ML4E (talk) 19:28, 10 March 2024 (UTC)