Category talk:China

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Huge reorganization of China-related categories[edit]

The previous CfD discussion and later discussions relating to this and other related categories cause so many problems that I am tempted to create a discussion on the huge reorganization of China-related categories. --Soumya-8974 (he) (talkcontribs) 07:38, 25 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The question is, should "China" without disambiguator be used to mean a country or a cultural region? If the consensus is for the former, then we should use it to mean Imperial China till 1912 CE, the Republic of China from 1912 to 1949 and the People's Republic of China from 1949 to present, just like the English Wikipedia. If the consensus is for the latter, then we should always disambiguate the China-related categories, which might make things messy. --Soumya-8974 (he) (talkcontribs) 07:05, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The English-language Wikipedia changed the People's Republic of China to "China" because of their "WP:COMMONNAME" policy which doesn't (officially) exist at the Wikimedia Commons, but categories should be named in a way most recognisable to people. The same could be argued for "Korea", before 1991 also "Germany", and before 1975 "Vietnam" all these refer to the capitalist country (South Korea, West Germany, and South Vietnam) while in the case of China the term "Taiwan" is used to call the capitalist country. Unlike with Korea, I have never heard of a South Korean being offended when you call their country "South Korea" or them "South Korean", in case of China this is more the case, both Communists and Taiwanese Independence Advocates hate the Republic of China and don't recognise its legitimacy, so they will claim that it stopped existing in 1949 making the People's Republic of China the only "real" China, pro-ROC people tend to view the Republic of China as "China" so whichever choice is made will make a lot of people upset. The Republic of China does officially see itself as China and there is no independent country called "Taiwan", but it would be equally stupid to assume that the People's Republic of China has ever had any sovereignty over the island of Taiwan and many people will think that making "Taiwan" a sub-category of "China" means the assertion that the People's Republic of China owns Taiwan.
So it's a difficult political question, the Republic of China is mostly recognised as "Taiwan", even in the Republic of China itself is the name commonly used to refer to the country and many people from the Republic of China use the term "China" almost exclusively to refer to the People's Republic of China rather than their own country (which is also officially called China), this makes it somewhat comparable with South Korea which never calls itself "Nam-Chosŏn" and people from South Korea would be offended if you call their country "Nam-Chosŏn" but their country isn't officially called "Chosŏn" in Korean, while "Taiwan" is officially called "中華民國 / 中國".
My personal political opinions are favour of using "China" as a cultural region like "Korea" is used, but I fully understand why this would be an undesirable outcome for many so I am "Symbol neutral vote.svg Neutral" on this. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 22:01, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I understand this. However, the status quo is not an option as the current category structure is already messy ("China" is used for both the PRC and the cultural region containing both the PRC and the ROC). IMO it would be better to keep both the country and the region category, but the country category would be renamed to "China" and the region category to "Greater China" (the existing category Greater China should be deleted to give room for this). Soumya-8974 (he) (talkcontribs) 08:50, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Another compromise might be to treat China as a region and Taiwan as a country, but don't treat the People's Republic of China as a country (except in some cases, e.g. government, space program, territorial disputes). Instead, treat Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau as individual countries, which eliminates any problems and questions (except for trivial ones) related to Commons terminology. Soumya-8974 (he) (talkcontribs) 13:09, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Striking my earlier suggestions as I no longer support them. Soumya-8974 (he) (talkcontribs) 13:34, 10 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]