Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/China- and Chinese-related articles/Archive 8

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How should articles refer to China's ruling party?

The names "Chinese Communist Party" and "Communist Party of China" are both widely used in reliable sources. Should we exclusively use one form of the name across Wikipedia, or should this be an "optional style" where different articles can use different forms of the name?

My view is that, reflecting reliable sources, it's reasonable for different Wikipedia articles to use different forms of the name. Generally, I don't think editors should mass-edit hundreds of articles to change one form of the name to the other. (See User talk:Amigao#Mass changes and WP:ANI#More mass edits without consensus for context.)

What do others think? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 20:24, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

  • Pinging Amigao, since they are mentioned in the above statement. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 21:00, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
  • The purpose of a discussion on an MoS talk page should be regarding proposed changes to the Manual of Style. Along those lines, it seems like it might be worthwhile to develop an RfC regarding the ways in which we might refer to the party. There's precedent for MoS providing guidance to exclude full abbreviations of official names (see MOS:USA). But that sort of guidance also appears to make exception for technical uses as well as contexts in which the fuller abbreviation (USA) is used as a part of a common name for a particular entity (Team USA). Based off of the above and other discussions (see: Talk:Chinese_Communist_Party/Archive_4#Requested_move_16_July_2020 and Talk:Chinese_Communist_Party/Archive_5#Requested_move_21_January_2021), users appear to be split into three camps on this:
    1. Camp 1: The term "Chinese Communist Party" is unacceptable to use when referring to the ruling party of China in almost all cases, since it is not the official name of the party. When writing the text of articles, users should avoid using this name and instead should only refer to the Party as the "Communist Party of China" when writing in wikivoice.
    2. Camp 2: Both "Chinese Communist Party" and "Communist Party of China" are both equally preferred names by which to refer to the ruling party of China. Editors are free to use either in an article, so long as the use is consistent throughout.
    3. Camp 3: The term "Chinese Communist Party" is ordinarily preferred to "Communist Party of China" when describing China's ruling party, as it is the dominantly common name that is used to refer to the entity.
I personally find appeals to the official name to be somewhat spurious, while there's good evidence that the "Chinese Communist Party" has been the dominant English-language name given to China's ruling party since its inception. I don't think either Camp 2 or Camp 3 are quite right, either. Camp 2 seems to be wholly neutral on which name is appropriate in an article, but WP:POVNAMING notes that [t]he best name to use for a topic may depend on the context in which it is mentioned. It seems quite reasonable to me that there are contexts in which the common name ("Chinese Communist Party") so completely overwhelms the use of the official name ("Communist Party of China") that it would be out-of-line with our sources to use the common name. Camp 3, on the other hand, needs to be clarified a bit—I don't think anyone has argued that "Chinese Communist Party" is superior to "Communist Party of China" in all contexts. As such, I propose that something along the lines of the following be added to MOS:CHINESE#NAMING under a new subsection:

There is a community consensus that the use of the name "Chinese Communist Party" dominates the use of the term "Communist Party of China" among reliable sources. While "Chinese Communist Party" should ordinarily be used to refer to the ruling party of the People's Republic of China, the best name to use may depend on the context in which the name is being used. In particular, in topic areas where reliable sources use the common and official names with similar frequency, either name may be chosen so long as the particular name is used consistently throughout the article.

— Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 04:46, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
  • I roughly agree with "Camp 2", though I might say "equally acceptable" rather than "equally preferred". Both terms are widely used by reliable sources, and both are fine to use in wikivoice. I disagree with "Camp 1" and "Camp 3". When multiple terms are common in reliable sources, there's typically no need to pick one term to enforce across the wiki. Rather, the choice of term can vary by article. I'm not sure anything needs to be added to the MOS about this, but if something is to be added, I might suggest something like this (modeled after WP:SHIPPRONOUNS):

The ruling party of China may be referred to as the "Chinese Communist Party" or the "Communist Party of China". As with all optional styles, articles should not be changed from one style to another without clear and substantial reason.

As for the issue of different contexts – for the question of CCP vs CPC, I don't see the value of trying to determine which term is more common in which contexts. Are there any specific contexts that you have in mind? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 09:38, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
My suspicion is that Hong Kong English and/or Singapore English might be different than other varieties of English in how they refer to the ruling party, but I don't really know how one would back this up with data. It's fairly clear to me that English, broadly, has always referred to the party as the "Chinese Communist Party" much more than it has referred to it as the "Communist Party of China". WP:SHIPPRONOUNS is a bit of a different situation, where there are arguments regarding whether the use of "she" is archaic (such as the use of "she" to refer to countries) and how to handle differences in the choice that different sorts of sources (i.e. technical v.s. popular press) use when referring to ships. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 17:11, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
I agree that WP:SHIPPRONOUNS is a different situation – I only borrowed the phrasing and don't endorse the same reasoning in that case. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 19:46, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
I did a little searching in Hong Kong and Singaporean media and found both forms used (which has also been my experience in US and UK media). For instance, this SCMP opinion piece uses one form in the text and the other form in a video caption. For whatever it's worth, a search of recent (since 2018) Google Scholar hits finds close to the same number for each (slightly more for CPC) [1][2] – but again, I don't see the value of trying to count number of usages in different types of sources, and would prefer to keep this an optional style. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 20:46, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
Both are equally valid, and there is precisely zero difference between them; no political connotations one way or the other, and to say or imply same is simply bull, pardon my French. Swings and roundabouts is what it is, What bugs me is that once a local discussion has decided on one variant, someone goes around and changes all other related articles on the basis of that consensus. Then a few months later comes another discussion citing more recent n-gram, and the name swings back to what it was before. The most recent name change flurry caused a number of these to appear on my watchlist, and I just wish do-gooders would just get a life and leave them the fuck alone. -- Ohc revolution of our times 22:33, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
  • The difference between "Communist Party of China" and "Chinese Communist Party" is similar to the difference between "Democratic Party" and "Democrat Party". While the two names appear completely interchangeable, for whatever reason, one is viewed as pejorative, while the other isn't. CPC is the official name of the party, and has no pejorative connotation. CCP is somewhat pejorative, probably because of who uses it, and because (like with "Democrat Party") consciously refusing to use the official name of the party itself sends a statement. These connotations exist, and the question is whether the Wikipedia community wants to use the somewhat pejorative (but still relatively common) term, as opposed to the neutral, official name.
One more thing to note is that a while back, there was an effort to go through Wikipedia and replace all instances of "Communist Party of China" with "Chinese Communist Party". As part of this blanket replacement, all sorts of official titles and organizations that include "Communist Party of China" in their official name were relabeled. For example, we now have an article on the "General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party", instead of the actual name of the position, "General Secretary of the Communist Party of China". Of course, according to Wikipedia, the General Secretary is nominated by the "Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party", rather than the "Central Committee of the Communist Party of China" (the actual official name of the organization). If you look at these articles, a lot of them are plagued by edit-warring over the name.
If I can give my view on why this mass replacement of the official name with the more pejorative term happened, I would guess that it has something to do with the rapidly deteriorating view of China in the West over the last few years (specifically, since Trump's election, but also tied to the pandemic), which comes across quite dramatically in opinion polling. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:24, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
  • I'm slightly more concerned about the use of CCP instead of CPC even though I use the former when the rest of the article already adopts it, because CCCP and CCP are too similar and because there seems to be some sort of a word-play going on to tap into Cold War sentiments. As for the full name, I don't think it should be changed in situations where the official title, name, or the terminology used by the source of an edit would become altered, for the same reason you wouldn't change USAFA to AAFA just because "American" stands in for "United States" sometimes. CurryCity (talk) 06:51, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
The fact that "there's evidence that the "Chinese Communist Party" has been the dominant English-language name given to China's ruling party since its inception" is sufficient to nullify the "pejorative" cold war political narrative, IMHO. It fails to demonstrate that there has been any significant shift relative in usage over time, Trump notwithstanding. The preference of one form over the other can, I think, be ascribed more to how the English language works, and people's preference for the simpler form – it's like the majority of people would tend to say "Jesse's cat" instead of "the cat of Jesse". The "of" in the middle of the formal title just makes it seem more stuffy and cumbersome. This is however totally unlike the case of the "Publicity Department" versus the "Propaganda Department": in English, the term "propaganda" definitely has a negative connotation, whereas there is only one word for both terms (宣傳) in Chinese so that I believe some official documents in English have used the term "Propaganda Department" in the past. Some editors with political axes to grind go for the low-hanging fruit, as this one seems to be, ascribing negative connotations where none existed before. Maybe it's the same ones edit-warring over some content I don't know about, but this one over CCP vs CPC is just so lame. -- Ohc revolution of our times 08:05, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
@Thucydides411: I also believe official titles should stay official in style. "General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party" and "Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party" both seem sooo wrong. Applying that logic, they should perhaps advocate "Chinese Communist Party General Secretary " and "Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, yet nobody does. Funny, that. -- Ohc revolution of our times 08:37, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
"Democrat Party" didn't originally have any pejorative connotations either, but it does now. "CCP" just happens to have become a somewhat pejorative term over time. The official term, "CPC", was used across Wikipedia until fairly recently, until it was pretty aggressively edit-warred out of most articles. I don't think this was done simply because of WP:COMMONNAME. I would be similarly concerned if "Democrat Party" were aggressively pushed across Wikipedia, and articles like "Democratic National Committee" were renamed to "Democrat National Committee", or even worse, "Democrat Party National Committee". -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:45, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
I'm not sure that it can ever work the same way. Sure that words can take on positive or negative connotations through time and usage, as "discrimination" did. There's clearly a morphological change with your example which led to a semantic change, whereas there is none in the CPC vs CCP debate. If Trump had invented the term "Chinese Communistic Party", that would have been another matter. -- Ohc revolution of our times 09:02, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
BTW, I'm not a big fan of the ruling party in China. -- Ohc revolution of our times 09:07, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
I'm not sure what being a "fan" has to do with anything. We're all supposed to edit neutrally here, without regard to personal beliefs.
With CPC vs. CCP, I can only speculate why the latter is pejorative, while the former isn't. The two obvious explanations that come to mind are that intentionally avoiding the official name sends a statement, and that critics of China in American politics tend to repeatedly use the term "CCP" when discussing anything related to China. Nevertheless, "CCP" has clearly acquired a somewhat pejorative sense.
You say that there's no real difference between CPC and CCP, so the latter can't really be pejorative. There's a very similar issue in transliterations of Mandarin Chinese, which shows how something seemingly innocuous can become a political statement. During the Cold War, usage of the Yale Romanization or Wade-Giles romanization in place of pinyin became a political statement. This is seemingly just a boring technical question of how to render Mandarin Chinese in the Latin alphabet, but it became a political statement. If there were suddenly a big push by a few hyperactive editors to replace all occurrences of pinyin with the Yale romanization throughout Wikipedia, I would be similarly skeptical.
If you want an even sillier example of this linguistic politics, take this article in the influential conservative American publication, the National Review. The article argues that we should all start calling Beijing "Peking" again, in order to take a jab at the communist Chinese. The last line of the article gives some insight into the thinking that goes behind using terms like "Peking" and "CCP":

If “Beijing” is the name the Chinese Communist Party prefers, well . . . the last thing we should do is agree to it.

Wikipedia hasn't gotten quite this silly yet, but this type of linguistic politics is spilling over into the encyclopedia, and the mass replacement of "CPC" with "CCP" across virtually all China-related articles is a sign of that. -Thucydides411 (talk) 12:12, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
@Thucydides411: I said that I'm not a fan of the Regime because I actually prefer the formal title "Communist Party of China", and that's not me being doctrinaire. I'm just a bit of a purist.

I can understand the argument you stated, and how people can deliberately politicise names by mispronouncing or otherwise distorting its form. Of course they do, but this particular example doesn't work for the reason I already explained above. Warring over CPC vs CCP is lame.

It's true that the govt of the PRC made a huge effort to use pinyin to supplant other romanisation, I think mainly because of claimed precision, the benefit of which is real. But other attempts by westerners to phoneticise the Chinese languages were [perhaps correctly] regarded by Beijing as "colonial" relics (devised by westerners and imposed on the Chinese language). The fact that Wade–Giles is widely used to phoneticise in Taiwan would of course be an additional reason for the Regime to want to erase it from existence, so the political motive is obvious.

On top of that, all phoneticisation methods have their imperfections. Although "Peking" was pushed into "Beijing", its usage is still not universal. The capital of the country is still referred to largely as "Pékin" to this day in France, for example. I don't think it's due to a colonial mindset – some people clearly can't get to grips with how the Roman alphabet has been usurped by pinyin conventions. But pinyin only represents the Mandarin dialect and none or the other SInitic languages, such as Cantonese of Hokkien, which the PRC government doesn't even recognise as languages in their own right (against the views of many scolars of language), and is trying to eradicate or at least marginalise. -- Ohc revolution of our times 13:34, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not saying that Hanyu pinyin is the end-all and be-all of romanizations, and I know that it is based on Mandarin, not Cantonese (just like the most recent German spelling reform was modeled off of the phonology of Standard German, not of Allemannic German, which is also called a "dialect", but which is not really mutually intelligible). I'm just pointing out that seemingly boring linguistic choices like the use of Yale romanization over pinyin can be a political statement. The same goes for Beijing/Peking. I know that French and German use Pékin/Peking, but in English, "Peking" is rare nowadays, and its use can be political (as the National Review article makes clear).
I agree that edit-warring over CPC vs. CCP is lame. However, I think the fact that there has been a push to replace every instance of CPC with CCP is a sign of non-neutral editing in China-related topics. I don't really care about "Democratic Party" vs. "Democrat Party" - that's also silly. However, if a group of editors were to go around Wikipedia systematically replacing every instance of "Democratic Party" with "Democrat Party", that would be a red flag to me. It would just be a sign of non-neutral, probably highly polemical editing in the relevant subject area. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:01, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
FYI Beijing as rendered in Wade–Giles would be Peiching. Peking is the pronunciation in one of the southern Chinese languages, I assume Cantonese (as well as not pinyin). Folly Mox (talk) 04:08, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
  • I don't belong to any camp, but I would agree that the official name should be used for pages about CCP officials and offices. The rapidly deteriorating view of China in the West - brought on by the Chinese Communist Party over its response to the COVID-19 outbreak - should not be in the scope of this discussion. CutePeach (talk) 15:08, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
  • This is one of those semantic issues which may engage a minority, but which most readers are likely completely unaware of. Either way readers will gain exactly the same information and meaning and impression, and in that sense the question doesn't really matter at all. (Others have noted lameness above, which is a similar point.) Given that, the general principle of preferring using whatever the article title is holds here (and I have not checked which one it is). Either way I don't see the need for a blanket rule; one name is clearly more descriptive and one name is official and there may be situations in which one or the other of these is preferable. Acronyms should follow whatever long-form is used in the article. CMD (talk) 15:25, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
    • Thanks to all above who joined in. I'm certainly glad that disputes are at the "lame" level. Just wait until the Regime unleashes its trolls on us, as we have already seen on zh.wp. God help us then. -- Ohc revolution of our times 16:00, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
  • It doesn't matter I am unhappy that this discussion is happening due to the result of disruption. This discussion should not be interpreted as an official reason to go around mass changing pages!! It doesn't matter. Its so unimportant I can't believe that editor time is being wasted on it. This should qualify for WP:LAME. Whether an editor wants to use one term or the other shouldn't be this big issue. But if folks really can't just get along and not go around making useless changes, I'd support Camp 2 or 3. Camp 3 is the standard usage in media, evidenced by its abbreviation CCP. Camp 2 is also workable, and I see no reason to force the hand of users. I have no idea why we'd choose camp 1, that feels like we'd be toeing the party line, which is so against our ideals. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 19:04, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
  • Prefer Chinese government, unless specifically talking about political parties. I've noticed a trend among right-wing media to always refer to the Chinese government as the CCP or Chinese Communist Party. I suspect this is because they like to emphasize how "communist" China is, because they have weaponized that word and call a variety of their enemies and various evil-doers socialists and communists. As a result, I consider CCP to be a weaponized term, and I prefer to use the more neutral "Chinese government" where possible. When referring to the United States government or the Trump administration, we don't go around calling those two things the "Republican party". We should try to avoid this misnomer when referring to China, unless we are specifically talking about political parties. I have no opinion on CCP vs CPC, I merely want to point out how the term communist seems to have been recently weaponized and is, in my opinion, being over-used in some Chinese articles. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:09, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae:The reason why we don't go around calling the United States government or the Trump administration, the "Republican party" is because of a different context compared with the PRC – it would probably be acceptable to conflate them to a certain degree because the Communist Party sits above the government of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese constitution. It's the modern day l'état, c'est moi. (BTW, do you agree with the redirects? I don't). -- Ohc revolution of our times 21:03, 8 May 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment - just a quick comment, I know people have actually provided evidence above but 中国共产党 literally translates to Chinese (中国) Communist (共产) Party (党), however the accepted translation would be Communist Party of China, this is due to the structure differences between the two languages, and as another user mentioned it just falls into semantics. I personally don't think it matters too much. As long as the article sticks with one the whole way through, then that's fine by me. 万岁中华人民共和国. X-750 I've made a mistake, haven't I? 01:17, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
    I can't accept 中国 as an adjective. It means "China" (these days), and can mean "Chinese" or "of China" contextually in colloquial translation, but when translated as a standalone word it's for sure a noun. "Communist Party of China" is indeed the more accepted translation, but I usually see 万岁 following the noun it's talking about. Folly Mox (talk) 04:31, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, which is why I gave an example, posters will have the 万岁 proceeding the 中华人民共和国，not preceding. Another example would be “去哪儿呢？”, which is "where are we going", literally it is "going where?" Not to mention Western pronunciations of Chinese names such as Zhou Guanyu (whose name is normally pronounced Guanyu Zhou by commentators). X-750 I've made a mistake, haven't I? 07:55, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
    Yeah, fwiw, none of these comments are correct, pretty much at any level.
    X-750 seems to misunderstand Chinese grammar (which is almost completely positional regardless of the 名 next to the word in a dictionary), misunderstand English grammar (which is easily but not completely positional—East China Sea and China Eastern Airlines are both fine but China Communist Party doesn't parse), misunderstand English words (the only difference between proceeding and preceding in this context is that one is just a misspelling of the other), misunderstand Chinese grammar again (the 万岁 goes at the end like Molly was saying), and misunderstand how names work (if Zhou Guanyu prefers to go by G.Y. Zhou in English more power to him but his actual Chinese name is Zhou Guanyu and commentators screwing that up because of how their forms are set up or because they assume their listeners aren't familiar with Xi Jinping, Mao Zedong, &c. yet has no bearing on anything).
    Similarly, FM links to an article which repeats a guy interested in astronomical history mistranslating 國 as region but that's not terribly authoritative. 中國 has always been the period understanding of the Chinese state, which context fits the bronze vessel being discussed just fine pending an actual discovery where it gets used to only mean a certain region within or outside of the realm. Likewise, it's not "colloquial" to translate it as "Chinese" or "of China": it's a simple requirement of turning Chinese thoughts into English thoughts. They are the literal meaning of the word in various contexts, including this one.
    Of course the completely literal translation of 中国共产党 is the Chinese Communist Party. It's [attributive] + [attributive] + [noun]. China Daily is still using it, Global Times is still using it, the MFA is still using it, &c. The Chinese equivalent of an actual CPC construction with a clearly noun-being-noun format would've been 中国的共产党, which they very obviously and sensibly preferred not to use.
    If for whatever reason (is it anything but consistency with the PRC and superstitious avoidance of USSR parallels?), they prefer to more generally use Communist Party of China as an official English name, we can absolutely respect that designation. It has nothing to do with the grammar.  — LlywelynII 02:06, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
  • I prefer Communist Party of China in general, though Chinese Communist Party is also acceptable, and which is preferable probably depends on context. We should in general use the official names for organisations, and shy away from colloquial names, particularly when those colloquial names are typically understood to be derogatory in nature (even when the colloquial name is more common). So for example, it's more acceptable to use the GOP for the Republican Party (colloquial, but non-derogatory) than Democrat party for the Democratic Party (colloquial, and derogatory), but "Republican Party" and "Democratic Party" are the official terms and should normally be used. Going around changing CPC->CCP or CCP->CPC en-masse in a semi-automated fashion, which is what this spawned off, is inappropriate regardless of which direction you're changing it in. Endwise (talk) 11:08, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
  • Needless timesink which needs a prompt close I'm just going to point everyone to MOS:RETAIN, and the recent discussion on she/it for ships, and say that the exact same kind of consideration should apply here. Unless there's a good reason to use a specific form in a specific article, then so long any individual article is internally consistent and clear (consistency might be less of a factor here, though, as varying the word order can make for a less monotonous read...), then there's really no need to waste editor time changing anything. And on the same grounds, somebody going off on a mass editing spree to change from one form to the other, in whichever direction, is equally a needless timesink. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:56, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
  • Reading the above, I am slightly surprised that no one has objected to the use of the word "communist" on the ground that communism as implemented in various 'communist' states including PRC does not conform to the Marxist ideal. They might suggest that "communist" be replaced by some other more descriptive formulation such as "Stalinist", "social fascist", or "state capitalist". JRSpriggs (talk) 21:12, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
    • That's because we're tryna do a translate, for a general readership encyclopaedia, not be social theorists downfallen yea again by nomenclature. We describe, not prescribe. Blessings, Folly Mox (talk) 08:25, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
    • Adjusted indention. --魔琴 (Zauber Violino) (talk) 07:18, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
  • Came from zhwiki. I suggest you use the "Communist Party of China" in formal contexts and the "Chinese Communist Party" in general ones, similar to what you do to the Republic of China (Taiwan) where you can see the "Government of the Republic of China" and "Elections in Taiwan." --魔琴 (Zauber Violino) (talk) 07:18, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
    @魔琴 I agree. It's ridiculous to have the names of the official offices be denoted under CCP, although I believe that CPC should be the preferred style everywhere, but should only be enforced in formal contexts, but keep the articles with CCP as it is, but standardize intra-article. Mat0329Lo (talk) 03:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
  • WP:AINTBROKE -- plus, I see no evidence that "Chinese Communist Party" is peggiorative. I've followed China professionally for more than fifty years and Maoists and Cold Warriors alike have used it. The official "Communist Party of China" is fine for officials, of course.ch (talk) 16:58, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
  • Who cares and early close per RandomCanadian and others. They're both acceptable phrasings, there's no need to specify a preferred style. Ban anyone who runs around edit warring one phrasing to the other. Problem solved. SnowFire (talk) 10:26, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hong Kong#Request for comment for Hong Kong or Hong Kong, China?

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hong Kong#Request for comment for Hong Kong or Hong Kong, China? for an RfC regarding how to phrase the place of birth for people born in Hong Kong after the Handover of Hong Kong on 1 July 1997.

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hong Kong#Request for comment: British Hong Kong or Hong Kong? for an RfC regarding how to phrase the place of birth for people born in Hong Kong before the Handover of Hong Kong on 1 July 1997. The RfC also discusses a bot request to modify all affected articles to comply with the new guidance.

The RfCs could result in changes to this guideline.

Cunard (talk) 05:00, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Use of 《》, 、, and【】

  • This has been bugging me too! When exactly are you supposed to use Chinese fullwidth punctuation when not quoting? Ever? I always find myself trying to bracket and brace characters inline, especially with names of works, e.g. 《说文解字》; Shuōwénjiězì, but end up taking it out—because of that damn closing bracket and its space to the semicolon.
  • 、 is really useful in my mind for separating characters, and that's how it's used, but does it scan to people who don't read any Chinese?

Remsense聊 04:03, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

[Modern] Standard Chinese

The 'Modern' is so clunky and unnecessary-feeling, I think it's much better to make "Modern Standard Chinese" discouraged, and if it seems necessary, mention that Standard Chinese is based off of the Beijing Dialect of Mandarin. Remsense聊 03:58, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Related discussion with inline formatting and templates

There's a discussion going on here regarding the {{zh}} template, and perhaps generally how best to format Chinese text with any number of

  • character-forms; transliteration; 'gloss'

which I meant to address somewhat starting with the creation of the {{zhi}} and {{zh2}} templates, and you're all invited here or there to share your thoughts! Remsense聊 15:59, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Regarding {{zhi}}, it's my feeling that |labels=no should have been the default all along, but we're too far gone to change it now, sadly. It's such a bother to type that I'll often use {{lang}} |1=zh unless I need both character forms, and just manually format the transliteration, having usually introduced the gloss aprior.
If we're talking about general improvements to {{zh}}, as the nom at TfD suggested, an optional |separator= (or something briefer) might be nice, as well as changing the glyph bracketing the gloss to a regular double apostrophe " from the atypical single apostrophe ', for which I often see and implement workarounds adding an additional single apostrophe within the |l= parameter value to give the appearance of a double apostrophe. Folly Mox (talk) 16:45, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
Yes, regardless of style, i think having {{zhi}} as an alias is worthwhile.
are single-quotes atypical? I thought they were usual for glosses regardless of source language—plus, i confess i like the appearance much better. {{zh|tr=}} should probably use "" instead, though at that point I think the use of {{zh|tr=}} inline is quite limited.
what i'd like is to be able to include multiple glosses in {{zh}} without having to exclude only the outermost single-quotes, e.g.
{{zh|c=字|p=zì|l=character, word}} instead of
{{zh|c=字|p=zì|l=character', 'word}} Remsense聊 16:48, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages with Chinese character titles

A discussion has been opened at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/〇 (disambiguation) pertaining to Category:Disambiguation pages with Chinese character titles (384). Folly Mox (talk) 22:22, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Spacing

Currently this guide doesn't really discuss spacing (other than a passing reference in the citations section). I propose that we add a note similar to WP:NCZH that "Pinyin is spaced according to words, not characters" and a link to the section of the pinyin article explaining how to determine word boundaries. Thanks to Jōkepedia for bringing this to my attention. SilverStar54 (talk) 03:38, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Agree Remsense聊 16:03, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Diacritics expert, please

Does anyone have an MOS-based opinion on this? Feel free to act on that knowledge: this is not a matter that I am able to discuss or have an opinion on. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 00:04, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

The relevant MOS section is linked at WP:PINYIN (emphasis added): "...Hanyu Pinyin without tone marks as the default Romanisation method for Chinese characters, except where an alternate form of a word is used by modern reliable secondary sources."
Based on this I would say the map labels you linked should not have those diacritics, especially because the pages they link to do not use them in their titles. If people want to know the tones, they can easily click the link and see the complete pinyin version. Exobiotic 💬 ✒️ 15:11, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
We should really add to that sentence "... except where an alternate form of a word is used by modern reliable secondary sources or where necessary for disambiguation within the article." Or something. This is how tone marks are already used in practice, although the way I've phrased it just here conflates the alternatives Pinyin with tone marks and non-Pinyin romanisations, so it would have to be rewritten for clarity.
That said, I don't typically remove tone marks when I come across them, even though the MOS would prefer it if I did. Pinyin is a deeply lossy conversion, and ditching the tone marks gives only an approximation, since the tones are lexical and not just there for funsies or as a pronunciation aide. It's always felt a bit parsimonious to me that we are expected to incorporate European glyphs like ç, ø, ö, ı, ğ, etc., while expected to remove the diacritics from Pinyin, which are equally if not more important to correct spelling.
I don't feel especially strongly about that, since the Pinyin with tone marks only identify proper pronunciation, and still don't offer a hint at what the underlying word might be, except in cases of syllables where only one or a few words is pronounced like that. I'm fine clicking through to look up the pronunciation if I really need to. The thing that I do feel strongly against in the MOS is cutting out the native words where an article exists. If I'm trying to understand what an article is talking about in comparison to something I've read in Chinese and have to keep tabbing back and forth between pages just to remember the name of a person or toponym, or the article I'm in is treating Chinese terms but the actual terms are hidden in a separate article, it just doesn't facilitate understanding, and thankfully this proviso is not always enforced. Folly Mox (talk) 19:17, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
Those strike me as reasonable concerns. I'm not a Chinese expert, but parts of this guideline have always seemed a little off to me, especially in comparison to treatment of diacritics and glyphs in Western languages.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:33, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
As a nuance: in my mind, I think it's important to use ü (generally not tone-marked) when writing transliterated Chinese words in pinyin, e.g. nüshu but not generally nushu or nǚshū. Remsense聊 04:07, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
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