[WikiEN-l] Classification of China?

Fri Apr 25 04:51:51 UTC 2003

Slrubenstein asked me to post the following on his behalf.
Everything below was written by him; I deleted some irrelevant parts.

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I have been in an edit war with JTDIRL and 172 on the China page, and I
think there is both a need for some intervention, and an intervention
that is not based on any argument about China, but rather about
Wikipedia conventions, especially NPOV and naming conventions.  [...]
And, as I said, I think what is most needed now is some explicit
discussion of Wikipedia conventions.

To fully grasp the debate behind the edit war you would have to read a
lot.  Minimally, I would suggest reading the entire [[Talk: China
(Archive 3)]] and [[Talk: China]] pages (which I know is a lot to ask
of someone who may not be so interested.  As a party to the dispute and
biased, I don't want to misrepresent it, but I will try to sum it up.

The question is, how to identify the Chinese (specifically, PRC) state.
 The article identified the state as communist.  I checked the Chinese
Constitution which states that it is a socialist state; an official
Chinese website states that it is not a communist state.  JTDIRL and
172 responded that all political scientists identify China as a
communist state and that we should go by what Western scholars do.  I
talked to a few colleagues of mine -- a sociologist, two
anthropologitsts, and a political scientist.  They told me that many
political scientists used to label China a communist state but that
they are moving away from that designation, considering it inaccurate
and meaningless; that many political scientists and most other scholars
identify China as a socialist state, although some qualify it as "late"
or "post" socialist.  Now JTDIRL claims that it doesn't matter what
political scientists say, that what ought to be presented is a "formal
encyclopædic definition."  

Now, I never heard of this phrase and doubt that it should be the basis
of our deciding how to identify any state, as what we are trying to do
is, arguably, devise a formal encyclopedic definition.  I think he
means we should call it a communist state because other encyclopedias
do.  I still think we ought to call it something that reflects the
current state of scholarship.

But I hope you can see why I think this is a matter of clarifying
general wikipedia conventions or norms, and not just a debate over
China.  [...]

I am ''not'' asking anyone to say "SLR is right and JTDIRL is wrong." 
I am asking the community, such as it is, to discuss the conventions
and clarify them as they may apply to the case.  

(written by Slrubenstein)
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Axel

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