Talk:Cross-Strait relations/Archive 1

Comments

This article at present contains little, if anything new that isn't covered in Political status of Taiwan. As such, I'm nominating it to be merged into that article. Also, this article at present contains much POV, and might be (from its uselessness) something that ought to be deleted instead. Ngchen 02:43, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Definitely. At the moment, it's just a silly explanation of prior events, instead of actually describing what the relations are like (as done in Political status of Taiwan.) --Breathstealer 11:30, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

It should be done in an opposite way. More materials should be moved to this article, and this article should serve as a main article for the relevant sections there. — Instantnood 23:03, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I concur. There are a lot of topics that actually belong in this article: cross-Strait marriages and families, immigration, commuting, tourism, commerce, etc. As a member of a family that has members on both sides of the Strait, I think this article could use some objective material about cross-Strait relations, not just the political issues. I'm watching this article and will add to it as time permits. I've done a little bit of grammatical and NPOV cleanup. If any tag should be added, I think that it should be that the quality of the article needs improvement. — Banazir 19:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Taiwan and mainland China, or ROC and PRC?

Most of this article is about government to government relations. We should be saying "Republic of China" and "People's Republic of China" rather than "Taiwan" and mainland China". Readin (talk) 13:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes I think we should, per NPOV policy.--123.243.102.34 (talk) 13:43, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Say "PRC and ROC" if it is government-to-government relations. Say "mainland and Taiwan" when it is not. There is no formal governmental contact between the two sides. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:36, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Regardless of whether the relations are formal, they are still relations between the governments. The ARATS and SEF may be "unoffical" but each is controlled and funded by its respective government to handle cross strait relations.

The second paragraph talks about the Chinese civil war, which was a war between governments - the PRC and ROC, not a war between Taiwan and China.

The third paragraph talks about more military conflict - again the actions of government. It also talks about how the governments prevented contact. It also talks about negotiations to create "three links" and again these negotiations are being conducted by the governments and will be concluded when the governments agree.

A large portion of the article talks about the actions of Chen, Hu and Ma - presidents of their respective countries.

Readin (talk) 06:04, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Given the fact that most English readers would not be familiar with the terms "ROC" or "PRC," only "China" and "Taiwan," it would be more logical to use the popular terminology, and avoid obfuscation. Further, the usage of two nearly identical terms should also violate neutrality as it is an underhanded attempt to make the two government sound like the same one (even though both are autonomous), that would be a pro-unification move, which is not neutral. In conclusion, since neither one would be neutral enough to stop the whining, it would be best to go with the popular choices that are most easily to understand. I hate lawyers.Ssh83 (talk) 22:59, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Hu doesn't dictate?

On March 20, 2008, the KMT won the presidency in Taiwan. It also has a majority in the Legislature. Compared to his predecessors, who often dictated conditions to Taiwan, Hu has been proactive in seeking ties with Taiwan on the basis of the "One China Policy", especially with the pro-unification Kuomintang party.[4]

How did Hu change? He's still dictating that Taiwan accept "one-china principle" before talks can begin. What has changed to justify the above quote that suggests Hu doesn't dictate terms like his predecessors did? Readin (talk) 16:42, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The source has this to say

But Hu does not dictate conditions to Taiwan. Instead he has built channels to influence Taiwanese politics. He has established solid ties with the pro-unification Kuomintang (KMT) and possibly also with the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party. He has acquired political mobility, which in politics, as in military affairs, is crucial for victory, or at least to avoid defeat. He has done this by being proactive, and not simply expecting Taiwan to come to him cap in hand. Rather, he took a big political risk as Beijing hosted then-KMT chairman Lian Chan, a visit that turned out to be a huge success.

Unfortunately that's all opinion with no reliable facts. The only fact it does have, about his meetings with the KMT, tells about his meetings with an opposition party, not anything he did to avoid dictating terms to Taiwan. Readin (talk)

Go according to what the source says. It is not up to us as editors to go behind sources: add in contrary opinions if another source has a different opinion. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:35, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Opinions should be attributed, not be presented as the view of Wikipedia. Unless some facts can be presented or the text says that the statement is an opinion of the source, then it needs to go. Readin (talk) 12:57, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Opinions need to be attributed only if the source is less than reliable, or if there is some dispute. If the opinion reflects broad consensus, and there are no significant contrary viewpoints, then it is fine as is. Most statements, remember, are in truth opinions even when they describe or summarise "facts". Is this source unreliable? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:28, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The piece is an opinion piece. It is not presented as a news story and makes no claim to being objective. It is not encyclopedic information. Do you have any evidence that the opinion reflects a broad consensus? Coming from a newspaper that lumps Taiwan into a grouping with China while giving Japan and Korea their own individual sections, I hardly consider the newspaper as a whole unbiased. They call the grouping "Greater China" which is a bit to reminiscent of Greater Serbia and Greater Germany. The Wikipedia entry for "Greater China" says it is an economic term, but in this newspaper there is a separate section for "China Business". So I do not consider the newspaper an unbiased source of opinion. The article is clearly only an opinion piece. And I've seen no evidence that it represents a consensus view. Have you looked to see what the DPP has to say about Hu's policies? Readin (talk) 02:19, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Um, actually, Greater China is a politically NPOV designation. I find it a bit objectionable, since it makes a distinction between so-called "Greater China" and "China".

Given that both the PRC and the ROC have committed themselves to the 1992 Consensus, the conception of China as one entity seems to me to be fairly NPOV - though of course it is not completely so since it is contrary to the opinions of hardcore Taiwan separatist supporters.

Moreover, it is reliability that matters, not "NPOV-ness". Of course, complete lack of neutrality often goes hand-in-hand with unreliability, but the two concepts are distinct. As far as I know, Asia Times is a reliable and professional news source. Of course, the conceptual paradigm that it works under is appreciably different to yours. That, however, does not of itself make it unreliable. That said, I have no issue if you want to qualify the sentence with "According to some observers", or indeed, "According to so-and-so's analysis".

What, precisely, is it that you are objecting to about this line? If you can bring up a couple of contradictory sources, then we can balance the different opinions.

I am not aware of what, if anything, the DPP has against Hu's policies. Could you elaborate? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Saying that Hu "dictates" to Taiwan more or less than his predecessor is inherently POV. It is not a provable fact. So the reliability of the Asia Times fact checking isn't issue. The article is an opinion piece and it expresses an opinion. It should be treated as such rather than being treated as fact. 16:20, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Enough politics, I think

The article has enough politics to establish the background, I think. I think what it needs more of are:

• actual relations: cross-strait marriages in recent years; defections, visits, whatever, in earlier years;
• cultural exchanges, other types of collaboration, etc.
• investment, economic co-operation, cross flow of money.

Your opinions? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:40, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Relations between countries are generally thought of in political terms. If you look at other articles about foreign relations of the China (Sino-Japanese relations, Sino-American relations, China-India relations) and Taiwan (Japan-Republic of China (Taiwan) relations) you'll find they are almost entirely about politics. As such I don't seen any great need to include non-political relations in this article, particularly since the term "cross-strait relations" was coined as a politically correct term for the political relationship between the two nations.

On the other hand, more information is better than less information. Just because information isn't provided on other important topics doesn't mean it shouldn't be provided for this important topic. If we go forward with this we should work to provide similar information about other important international cultural exchanges such as the cultural exchanges between Taiwan and Japan and the high rates of marriage between Taiwanese and southeast Asians.

The one big question then is where to put this information on non-political relations. Should it be in this article which uses a named for the political stuff, or should it be in another article and if so, what should we call it? "Sino-Taiwanese Exchanges"? Readin (talk) 13:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, this isn't about relationships between "countries" - in fact, the PRC and ROC have no official relations. All the relations have been political non-relations, plus semi-official and non-official exchanges.

The Chinese wikipedia article, which is featured, I think, divides the article into two broad sections: "Political relations", which broadly covers the topics we've dealt with so far. Then several sections on things like economic, cultural, etc exchange.

I agree with you that obviously the political relations is the most important: but the politics is also dealt with in great deal in articles like Political status of Taiwan.

Perhaps what we can do is one section on history and politics (i.e. what we already have), and then another section on non-political relations.

I think the common sense meaning of the word "relations" is broad enough to encompass both official and non-official relations. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I think it's impossible to stop people from throwing political views left and right, especially when the majority of the page is about political stuff. Just look at the disagreement in whether to use China/Taiwan or PRC/ROC, zealots find all kinds of crap out of anything. Perhaps it will be better to create a seperate article for non-political relation. Maybe put big bold letters on the top mentioning that. Ssh83 (talk) 23:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Cross-strait relations "occasionally" non-governmental??

I'm not happy about the wording there.

I think cross-strait relations are almost entirely non-governmental, with the dubious exception of SEF-ARATS negotations. Those were alive for only about 10 years out of the almost 60 years that the article focuses on. How about this formulation:

"Cross-strait relations refers to the relations between mainland China, which sits to the west of the Taiwan Strait, and Taiwan, which sits to the east. Especially, it can refer to the relations between the respective governments of the two areas, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China."

Your thoughts? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 06:23, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I can agree that most relations between any two countries are non-governmental. Most relations between the US and China are economic and cultural, but when someone talks about "Sino-American relations" they are almost always talking about politics, and the Sino-American relations article is almost exclusively about relations between the two governments. The same is true for Sino-Japanese relations, China-India relations, Japan-Republic of China (Taiwan) relations, etc.. A google search on "cross strait relations" turns up a lot of information about how the governments behave toward each other.

I'm not thrilled about the wording of the sentence either - I'm a better editor than a writer - but I was looking for a way to accommodate your desire to make the article about more than just governmental relations while keeping true to the fact that most of the time (not always, but most of the time) the term "cross strait relations" is used for governmental relations.

Your statement that "I think cross-strait relations are almost entirely non-governmental, with the dubious exception of SEF-ARATS negotations." is simply false, particularly with your qualification of 10 out of 60 years. For a large portion of the last 60 years, the only relations between Taiwan and China were governmental. They were conducted through fighting (small scale fighting occurred on the Taiwan-controlled islands near China long after the war), and indirectly through other nations and international organizations (the fights for recognition) and through public statements. Just because they negotiations and conflicts weren't always "official" doesn't mean they weren't controlled by the governments and therefor inter-governmental. Readin (talk) 11:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with your analogy of "Cross Strait relations" with "Sino-[insert country] relations". Regardless of one's views of the political status of Taiwan, it cannot be denied that the relations between the PRC and the ROC were, for a long time, that between competing regimes of the same country; that this is no longer the case today does not mean that they have somehow become ordinary foreign relations. Neither government treats, nor has ever treated, the other as a "foreign" government - though perhaps a few of the more fanatical supporters of the Taiwan Solidarity Union might wish it was otherwise.

It is simply misleading to draw comparisons with "Sino-American relations".

I also disagree that "fighting" between two governments can be described as inter-governmental relations. It is better described as the lack of relations. There has never been any inter-governmental relations. I think of inter-governmental relations in its full form as exemplified by the system of High Commissions in the British Commonwealth: though the sovereignty of all realms are vested in the same person (the Queen), each government sends High Commissioners as representatives of the government (but not the sovereign). There is simply nothing remotely like that between the PRC and the ROC. All we can talk about on the governmental front is all the attempts to - or failure to - create any such relationship. Rather, the focus of the article already is on the lack of relationship, and the semi-official and non-officil (e.g. party-to-party) relationships.

How about this as a compromise?

": "Cross-strait relations refers to the relations between mainland China, which sits to the west of the Taiwan Strait, and Taiwan, which sits to the east; especially, the relations between the respective governments of the two areas, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China." --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:23, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with several of your arguments, but your proposal is pretty good - much better than what I wrote. So I'll focus on the proposal. We can modify it slightly to avoid having to describe the disputed stuff as "countries" which would be more accurate than "areas" but would likely offend you.

": "Cross-strait relations refers to the relations between mainland China, which sits to the west of the Taiwan Strait, and Taiwan, which sits to the east; especially the relations between their respective governments, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China."Readin (talk) 03:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. That sounds great. I'll implement it into the article. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 01:42, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

IMO, what's the point of an explaination when nobody knows what you're talking about? Do any of you actually know people who can read that and understand it's talking about chinese government and the taiwanese government? Sigh... Ssh83 (talk) 23:23, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

book exchanges

"Cultural exchanges have increased in frequency. The National Palace Museum in Taipei and the Palace Museum in Beijing have collaborated on exhibitions. Scholars and academics frequently visit institutions on the other side. Books published on each side is regularly re-published in the other side, though restrictions on direct imports and the different orthography between the two sides somewhat impede the exchange of books and ideas."

What impact have free speech restrictions had on such exchanges? I'm not sure if Taiwan still enforces any of its old anti-communism laws that restrict speech, but I suspect quite a lot of text regarding history and politics gets blocked in China. Readin (talk) 16:15, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

There are censorship issues on both sides. "Pro-China" media and publications are not allowed in Taiwan, and similarly pro-independence media and publications are not alowed in China. I don't have citable sources to hand though - will add such information as I come across them. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

From what I've read, Pro-China media and publications are very much allowed in Taiwan. In fact I hear and read a lot of complaints about them. And there was a scandal (about a year ago I think) where a TV station (TVBS?) was majority owned by China in violation of laws, but the Taiwanese high court ruled that the ownership could remain as is.Readin (talk) 03:45, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, you'll find that the Xinhua News Agency and the People's Daily have been disallowed from posting reporters to Taiwan under the Chen Shui-bian administration, and the Phoenix TV satellite channel has had its landing rights revoked, all on the bases that they were "pro-China" (in the sense of supporting the concept of the legitimacy of the PRC as the government of all China) in stance. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

There is a difference between "Pro-China" and "from China". What what I've read, pro-China media and publications are very common in Taiwan due to the ownership of much of the media.Readin (talk) 14:30, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, for information on the status and extent of formal censorship laws in Taiwan (as opposed to informal measures like refusing landing rights, discussed above), see the US State Department Human Rights report here, e.g.:

"The GIO, which requires that any publications imported from mainland China be sent to the GIO Publications Department for screening before sale or publication, has the authority to ban importation of publications that advocate communism or the establishment of united front organizations, endanger public order or good morals, or violate laws. Nevertheless, a wide variety of mainland China-origin material was accessible through the Internet as well as in retail stores. Cable television systems were required to send imported material to the GIO for screening or to convert subtitles from the simplified characters used in mainland China to traditional characters before broadcasting."

"The law prohibits teachings, writings, or research that advocate communism or communist united front organizations, which endanger the public order or good morals, or violate regulations or laws. The authorities did not otherwise restrict academic freedom or cultural events." --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:51, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

The reports on China, Hong Kong, and Macau, including details of their respective censorship policies (or lack thereof) is here. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:55, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Taiwan has a lot of laws on the books left over from when the authoritarian Kuomintang ruled a one-party state. While the DPP captured the Presidency for a while, they never gained control of the legislature to the point that they could overturn all those laws. The question isn't whether the laws are on the books, but to what extent they are enforced.Readin (talk) 14:30, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, what's your point? It's a fact that the "democratic" Chen Shui-bian regime banned Xinhua, People's Daily, and Phoenix TV -- and the GIO continues to exercise its censorship powers. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:54, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

My understanding is that Chen banned the reporters from those news organizations, not the news from those organizations. My point? I just think when we talk about literature exchanges between the countries we should also accurately mention the censorship either or both countries engage in.Readin (talk) 02:28, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

"Landing rights" means the right of a satellite channel to be received in an area: revoking Phoenix's landing rights means that the channel could not be seen in Taiwan without some innovative tweaking of one's hardware. Incidentally, mainland China has now done the same to Phoenix's news channel -- apparently not pro-PRC enough. On the question of cross-Strait politics, my impression is that both sides are quite ruthless with the censoring button - the main difference is that the ROC does not censor its internet while the PRC does so with abandon.

You said when we talk about literature exchanges between the countries we should also accurately mention the censorship either or both countries engage in

I agree with that. It's all quite rough at the moment. Perhaps we can add the details from the US human rights report as appropriate. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

more facts please

The new section on informal relations has a lot of weasal words and opinions. Sentences like "There are regular programs for school students from each side to visit the other." don't really say much. Many country have such programs. Saying "Frequent interactions occur between worshippers of Matsu, and also between Buddhists." would be better numbers or examples were provided.Readin (talk) 18:01, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Agree completely on the point of lack of specific details - though I don't think there are any weasel words in the section. I was writing off the top of my head just to flesh out the bare headings a little. Hope to add verifiable facts as soon as possible. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:49, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Original Research!!!!! Delete!! j/k. Though imo, there really isn't any way to put any details into this politically charged relation. For example, if they put something about TsuZi from taiwan helping out recovering from disasters in China, then someone can easily make some shit about how that sounds one-sided and they don't mention how china helped taiwan or whatever blah blah blah. Where as if it's vague and sounds mutual, it's less likely to have conflicts. /shrug This is where humanity is its greatest obsticale in what humanity is attempting to achieve. haha. Ssh83 (talk) 23:19, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, there are verifiable sources... I just haven't had the time to dig them up. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 23:55, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

English sources

Are the current SEF-ARATS meetings getting reported anywhere in the English media? I saw no mentions in the couple of newspapers that I keep an eye on (e.g. London Daily Telegraph, Sydney Sydney Morning Herald)? It would be good to have some English sources rather than relying almost exclusively on Taiwanese sources. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:05, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Are you talking about language or country of origin? The Taipei Times is a good English language source but it is from Taiwan.Readin (talk) 02:24, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, good question. I guess I'm thinking both language (English) and place of origin (Western countries). Taipei Times and China Post are both valuable sources from Taiwan, and China Daily and English Xinhua give the mainland perspective. So far I've been using mainly China Times from Taiwan, which is Chinese language. My concern about the sources listed above are 1) English language newspapers from Taiwan do not offer a very different perspective to what is already in the article, while 2) the mainland sources are very slow with the news, basically rehashing "confirmed" and "approved" news releases.

I was hoping, however, that more "traditional" Western media would have some reports. I've found an article from the BBC and also one from Voice of America. Still nothing on the print media front, though. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:55, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Try the search capability at the Washington Post. Search for "Taiwan" because that is the common name for both the country and the government. Readin (talk) 13:59, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:11, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Title Issue

Why is it accepted that the phrase "Cross-Strait relations" should directly relate to China and Taiwan? Maybe, more specificity such as, "Cross Taiwan Strait Relations" or "China-Taiwan relations" would make more sense for the layman. Couldn't the reader make the mistake of assuming this phrase may mean something like Gibraltar-Morrocco relations? --Edwin Larkin (talk) 16:55, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I did a search for "cross strait relations" at Washington Post and another at Google and the top 10 hits at both sites were all about relations between Taiwan and China. You'll have to find another phrase if you want to talk about Gibralter-Morrocco relations without confusing people. Readin (talk) 19:40, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. --Edwin Larkin (talk) 20:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Image

I know that particular template is the norm for country-country relations, yet perhaps an image that only shows East Asia would be more appropriate? It is difficult to see little Taiwan and discern it's importance compared to the monolithic PRC. Comparing the two on the world scale is unnecessary, distracting people from seeing both sides clearly. Bah, I could've been clearer... Crazy (talk) 00:13, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree.Readin (talk) 02:27, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Agree that the current map is pretty useless. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:45, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Was the arrow added before or after these suggestions? My first instinct upon realizing it was an arrow was that this came from Uncyclopedia. Peacekeep (talk) 10:44, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Please anyone good with map editing replace this with zoomed in map of China and Taiwan showing the Taiwan Strait also. --Mistakefinder (talk) 04:26, 8 December 2009 (UTC) {{helpme}}

You might want to go ask Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps for assistance. Josh Parris 04:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thawing of relations (1979-1998)

This secton seems to ignore the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, which was a major effort by the PLA (as distinct from the CCP or PRC) to interfer in Taiwan's internal affairs. Jiang Zemin's January 1995 Eight Points were an effort by the civilian leadership to rein in the armed forces. At a minimum, there should be a section on the 1994-98 period. DOR (HK) (talk) 04:02, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Could you add some references for that interpretation to the article? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:27, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

"mainland side" and "taiwan side" in flights agreement

In the section on cross-straight flights, the term "side", prefixed with "Taiwan" or "mainland" is often used. I suspect the official agreements use these terms, which is why they are repeated here. However, those terms are not very accurate. The agreement was signed by the governments called the PRC and ROC. Rather than saying "the Taiwan side" agreed to something, we should just say the ROC agreed to something. Readin (talk) 03:28, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

The agreements aren't signed by the governments, as they don't recognise each other. They are signed by two semi-official organisations - SEF and ARATS, which are authorised by their respective governments to negotiate and sign agreements. In respect of the terminologies of "Taiwan side" and "mainland side", I have no opinions on them. They are common terminologies used in Taiwan and I suspect that they are the original terminologies used in the agreements, although I am not privy to the original text.--pyl (talk) 04:12, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that "mainland side" and "Taiwan side" would be more precise and neutral than "PRC/ROC" in this context. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:46, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I've raised the question in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)‎, particularly as it relates to what Wikipedia should call Taiwan in other government-to-government relations. Readin (talk) 17:40, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

New main article for 2008 meetings?

The material on the 2008 meetings have accumulated to a fairly large size. Should we make a new article for "ARATS-SEF meetings" or perhaps "2008 ARATS-SEF meetings"? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:48, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe there is a need because it has been announced that there will be a meeting approximately every 6 months. The series of meetings will take up too much space.--pyl (talk) 01:14, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I'll make a start at User:PalaceGuard008/ARATS-SEF meetings. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 22:01, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

The first meeting should be a separate article just like what you said above ARATS-SEF. The second meeting should just be linked to Chen Yunlin and APEC2008. Once you split the page, I think I can help you put this page in a more chronological order. Benjwong (talk) 22:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Dire Straits

Rename the article to indicate which of the many straits on Earth it's all about please. Hcobb (talk) 20:48, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

• I concur. Although "cross-strait" means "China-Taiwan" to anybody who cares about international affairs at the present time, if any significant happen across any other straits, this title would become confusing. I suggest, Cross-Strait Relations Between China and Taiwan. -- Masamunecyrus^(talk)_(contribs) 02:55, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Need more info on this section: Humanitarian actions

It is stated that both have provided support to each other on several occasions, however there's only 1 example of such. Surely someone can add more examples? Children of the dragon (talk) 09:33, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Surface to air missiles

China's surface to air missiles are China's surface to air missiles. There's no reason to use an acronym when we can simply use the name of the country, the name used by both sources currently cited too. CMD (talk) 18:43, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

"There's no reason to use an acronym when we can simply use the name of the country..."—There's no reason to break from the completely neutral terminology when the rest of the article (which happens to cover a sensitive issue) uses it. BTW, I can never cease roaring in laughter at the stupidity of what you write on Wiki. GotR ^Talk 19:11, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

It is completely neutral, and is the way the sources describe the situation. Your continued personal attacks don't help your arguments along. CMD (talk) 19:48, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

"It is completely neutral"—a flaming lie, and not when it implies that Taiwan is separate from China (which Wikipedia, much less you, has no right to decide upon). Sources use "mainland" in great proportion, too, and according to Shrigley's logic, because this article is something that originates directly from the original KMT–CCP struggle, terminology ought to be precise. I should remind you, for the googolplex-th time, that NPOV applies fully in article text—you are manipulating policy solely to your ends. GotR ^Talk 01:19, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I think PLA works fine for describing who the missile belongs too. "Fujian, China" might be a good compromise between simply saying "Fujian" or simply saying "China". This is a topic were NPOV needs to be approached carefully. The famous "three admin" decision for renaming the China and Taiwan articles said that the decision applied to the names of the articles, not necessarily to the text. We still need to be careful about the text and if we can easily avoid NPOV issues we should try to do so.

Explaining how this ongoing issue actually has anything to do with WP:NPOV - rather than simply asserting it - might be a start. As noted ad nauseam, and above, most serious sources are fine with juxtaposing "China" and "Taiwan" in a modern geopolitical context. Indeed, the vast majority of them do it the vast majority of the time. Our articles finally made it to those names as well and have been there for a while now - and guidelines suggest we should follow that in text, even if the admin decision did ask for people not to go nuts over it ("necessarily" is the key word above). Here's the news - Taiwan is separate from China as commonly understood in a geopolitical context in 2012 (even if not in a wider historical, cultural or broader geographical sense). WP is not trying to "decide" anything by following that. By contrast, we have one WP editor trying to decide that they alone know better how to describe things than nearly every serious real-world reference source. That's the real problem. N-HH talk/edits 09:07, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Not all sources juxtapose "Taiwan" and "China". And some that do try to achieve neutrality by bouncing between terms (for example by using "China" and "mainland" in a single article). There are places where attempting to tread the fine line of not endorsing either side of the debate on whether Taiwan is part of China results in unnecessary verbosity and a lack of clarity and in those cases it is fine to simply say "Taiwan" and "China". However this is not one of those cases. Using other terms like "PLA" don't reduce the clarity of the article here. Readin (talk) 16:02, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps not all sources do, but the vast majority do so (in their text too, not just their titles). For example, every single source cited in the section including this picture, including the one hosted by globalsecurity.org but apparently taken from the ROC Central News Agency. Compared to "China", "PLA" is a little known acronym. Captions should be succinct and understandable. This whole semantic issue over the implication of Taiwan being in China or not simply doesn't exist in most English sources. CMD (talk) 11:18, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

As Readin implied above, a significant proportion of sources consider the juxtaposition to have POV implications to use "mainland" and "Taiwan" versus simply juxtaposing "China" and "Taiwan", so stop marginalising it as if it were the same (or even similar) proportion of usage between "PRC" and "China" or "ROC" and Taiwan".

There is no valid excuse to not use the "Fujian coast", especially when it is the most precise and accurate descriptor of the western coastline in that map, and it avoids the clear NPOV issue with saying "Chinese coast" or "coast of China".

I am still perplexed by the failure of the two in the opposition (CMD and N-HH) to explain the juxtaposition in the rest of the article—bluntly put, I am shown that all the two are intellectually capable of is coming up with a "one-size-fits-all" approach. I won't go on about N-HH's continued solo-editor attacks, because I will be RUDER about it. GotR ^Talk 14:13, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

To repeat - "Explaining how this ongoing issue actually has anything to do with WP:NPOV - rather than simply asserting it - might be a start". You keep claiming it is a POV issue, and are now claiming that you know this is why some sources use different or differing terminology, despite your having no evidence whatsoever for that claim. Plus, I haven't the faintest idea what "solo-editor attacks" means, or what it even might refer to. Nor have I ever said that every mention has to be in the China-Taiwan form, here or elsewhere. As you well know, I support the use of PRC-ROC where context demands it; and am also happy for variation even where it is not formally needed, including use of "mainland", simply on the basis that good English writing tries to avoid mindless repetition (which, of course, is as likely to be the actual reason for variation within sources much of the time).

However, most of the time we should follow common usage of simple China-Taiwan, per reliable sources, where it fits the context and where the context in turn shapes and clarifies the meaning of the terms (clue: this is how the English language works - something, to be frank, you don't seem to understand). The majority of sources do prefer that use most of the time, as proven in the page moves and elsewhere. WP does not have to bow to your idiosyncratic aversion to the use of the terms "China" and "Taiwan" and bizarre reasoning as to what problems supposedly exist in using them. That's something you've got to work out for yourself. Meanwhile, please drop the crusade here on every single page the issue comes up. N-HH talk/edits 15:03, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

The majority of neutral, reliable sources from qualified commentators in the field use "mainland" vs "Taiwan", or "mainland China" vs "Taiwan". A million ignorant fools do not make the truth (except sometimes on Wikipedia, but they shouldn't). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:23, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Links

>> Taiwan announces landmark China visit >> China and Taiwan hold historic talks (Lihaas (talk) 15:22, 28 January 2014 (UTC)).

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/us-asia-aiib-taiwan-idUSKBN0MS36G20150401

Is this notable yet, or only after the application is made? Hcobb (talk) 15:58, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Lead

I notice a bit of toing-and-froing on the lead recently. I restored it to the old version because that reflected the consensus reached through heated and prolonged discussion several years ago. If anyone feels that the article would benefit from, for example, long sentences pointing out the ROC coes not exist, or a long table replicating demographic data for the two sides, or misusing zhuyin as if it was romanisation or ruby text, please discuss and seek consensus. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:20, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

I cannot see any reason to delete the comparison table, they are very common in the bilateral relations pages in Wikipedia. I have restore the table and now it is fully referenced. The original lead should be rephrased to use terms like PRC and ROC, Cross-strait relations is not limited to mainland China and Taiwan after Hong Kong and Macao was returned to China. The original wording is definitely wrong in contemporary use. For the info box, zhuyin usage is the right one, this can be easily checked on the online source, such as MOE dictionary 68.181.51.107 (talk) 23:37, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

You misunderstand my objection to inclusion of zhuyin. Zhuyin is not a romanisation system, and the inclusion of zhuyin in a language box is, except in rare situations, inappropriate. I doubt very much you genuinely think adding zhuyin will help users navigate the article, you are doing this to score political points, and that's inappropriate.

No doubt you see no reason to delete the comparison table. The problem is simple: this article was not originally an international relations article. It discusses the complex relationship between the two geographical areas and/or their ruling political entities, neither of which actually treat their relations as "international". It is for this reason that I object to the inclusion of a comparison table that is, as you say, quite usual for our articles on international relations. I maintain this objection. However, on the basis that this article has already turned in many ways into something similar to an international relations article, I will not delete it. But the heading needs to be accurate. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:36, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

A bit of toing-and-froing in the lead again. I restored it to the old version for the same reasons cited by PalaceGuard008 a couple of years ago. Please discuss here before re-re-re-reverting my restoration. Phlar (talk) 02:14, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

I have made a couple more changes. "China-Taiwan relations" (中台關係) is still a non-neutral and minority usage, adding one example of that usage does not change that. I have moved the reference down to the paragraph that discusses alternative terms.

The dab link to Anglo-French relations is just bizarre. The two countries are separated by the English CHANNEL, it would be extremely odd for the English Channel to be referred to as a "Strait", or Anglo-French relations to be referred to as "cross-Strait relations". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:13, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

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Merge from 2016 Chinese meme war on Facebook

I am going to start this. Pinging User:Snuge purveyor, whose draft from the AfD I will try to adapt. Thanks for any help, and please feel free to revert me if I am doing this wrong. GreyGreenWhy (talk) 19:53, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Non-neutral IP?

Hi, IPs 114.187.134.153, 41.39.39.61, 60.37.147.243 and 2600:8801:2e00:1da0:e810:d5ea:5dd:4cbe, please can you explain your changes to the article per the bold edit, revert, discuss cycle on Wikipedia. I feel the changes are some what pointy, undue and add unnecessary details. Please explain why I am wrong. Pinging recent editors User:Oshwah, User:DoctorHell, User:Fizikanauk and User:Lasersharp to comment. Apologies if I am doing this wrong. Thanks, GreyGreenWhy (talk) 10:56, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

I reverted again. IP, please comment here. To be honest, I think making clearer PRC=Mainland China and ROC=Taiwan is a good idea, but this issue and your other edits are major changes that need discussion. Please explain what you are trying to do. Thank you for helping on this, GreyGreenWhy (talk) 09:46, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

There is a lot of confusion about the People's Republic of China (PRC) vs. Republic of China (Taiwan), most people in the world don't understand that both countries have major differences in their culture especially since the communist People's Republic of China (PRC) underwent a disruptive Cultural Revolution which effectively erased 9,000 years of ancient Chinese culture from the modern Chinese people. What you see when you go to communist China is a modern day 50 year old culture that combines elements of communism, Marxism, Socialism with bits and pieces of ancient Chinese culture that the Communist Party of China finds compatible with their communist one-party state political system, any kind of cultural tradition originating from ancient China that is deemed incompatible with modern Chinese communism, socialism, marxism is effectively erased from the public consciousness of the people in the People's Republic of China through their public education system. Alot of the original ancient Chinese architecture was destroyed by the communist Red Army during the Cultural Revolution this is why the modern day communist Chinese people call their country "New China" in reference to the relatively new 50 year old communist Chinese culture and their 50 year old simplified writing script that exists in China. Where in contrast, Taiwan has continued to preserve 9,000 years of ancient Chinese culture in it's original unchanged form while being a modern technologically innovative country in much the same way that modern Japan preserves their 2,000 year old ancient Japanese cultural traditions while continuing their technological innovation. The point of clarifying this distinction on the article is that in modern day communist People's Republic of China (PRC) there is concerted effort to promote their version of Communist Chinese culture and pass it off to Europeans, Africans, Americans and the rest of the world as the default standard of "Chinese culture" and the communist simplified Chinese writing characters as the default standard of "Chinese writing" when in fact both are merely a 50 year old synthesis that originated from the mind of Chairman Mao Zedong and his communist Chinese officials and scholars. And many uninformed people worldwide actually believe that the communist Chinese culture, and the 50 year old simplified Chinese script, are actually the original 9,000 year old ancient Chinese culture that is practiced in Taiwan and to some degree in Hong Kong, although Hong Kong is already a territory of the communist People's Republic of China (PRC) and it is only a matter of time, perhaps in 20 years, that Hong Kong's ancient Chinese culture will gradually be replaced with the communist Chinese culture that is being enforced upon the people in Hong Kong. As we speak now, there are efforts by the communist Chinese government in Beijing to actively promote the 50 year old simplified Chinese writing system and eliminate the 8,000 year old ancient Chinese writing system that most Hong Kong residents use with the exception of the growing numbers of communist Chinese immigrants who are moving into Hong Kong to live permanently. So eventually Hong Kong will lose their ancient Chinese culture as the public school system transitions to the 50 year old communist simplified Chinese writing script and eliminates the original 8,000 year old ancient traditional Chinese writing script. Whereas Taiwan is the only cultural sanctuary where the original 8,000 year old ancient Chinese script is still used as well as the only country that still continues the ancient Chinese traditions that date back thousands of years. A good example would be to look at the recent celebration of Chinese Lunar New Year in both China and Taiwan, any foreign visitor like myself who has traveled to both countries before would notice a striking difference and contrast in how the communist Chinese celebrate vs. how the Taiwanese celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year. In the communist People's Republic of China (PRC) it's been transformed into mainly a family reunion with CCTV and other communist Chinese television shows promoting communist/socialist/marxist ideals embedded within their Chinese New Years TV specials. Whereas in contrast, the Taiwanese celebrate in the ancient Chinese way with people engaging in ancient Chinese rituals as well as visiting Taoist temples, Ancient Chinese Religion temple and making offerings to the ancient Chinese Gods for good luck and fortune for the new year of the dog. General readers of Wikipedia should understand that there are two different versions of Chinese culture, now as you can see from the previous edits, I'm not taking any sides in the conflict between China and Taiwan, I have made fair edits for both China and Taiwan without any biases. The only purpose of these edits are to clarify any confusion that people will have regarding the differences in the 50 year old communist Chinese culture of China vs. the unbroken continuation of 9,000 years of ancient Chinese traditions that are still being practiced in Taiwan. Additionally general readers need to know the differences in the political government systems of both countries with China being a communist one-party state and Taiwan being a liberal democratic state. And since both countries are still effectively at war with each other in much the same way as North Korea and South Korea it is necessary to write about the military preparations that both countries have made in recent years. China has been trying to take over Taiwan for the past 70 years and has never succeeded in large part due to the constant improvements and war preparations that Taiwan has made, essentially creating a balance of power between these two countries in the Taiwan Strait. The original edit was confusing as it did not touch upon the reality that both communist China and democratic Taiwan are two very different countries with two very different versions of "Chinese culture," one 50 year old communist Chinese version and the other 9,000 year old Ancient Chinese version. The only culture these two countries have in common is their spoken language of Mandarin Chinese which is mutually understandable in both communist China and Taiwan despite differences in the spoken accent and usage of words (i.e. the word of chopsticks is different in China vs Taiwan since Taiwan uses the original ancient Chinese term for chopsticks that was used thousands of years ago), this is analogous to the difference between American English vs. British English. But aside from the spoken Mandarin Chinese, general readers need to be informed and made aware of the differences in the two very different versions of "Chinese culture." Thank you! 112.221.153.91 (talk) 15:09, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi, IP 112.221.153.91, and thank you for agreeing to discuss these changes. I agree with most of the points you are making, but I am not sure this emphasis on cultural differences is suitable for an article about diplomatic relations between them.

Other relevant articles such as Culture of the People's Republic of China and Culture of Taiwan may be more suitable for this information. However, please note that Wikipedia should provide neutral information, not make a point (however valid that point may be), because of the guideline Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.

Also, if you want to add a proper paragraph on this idea, it should be referenced to reliable sources, as we need content to be verifiable, not just true, which means we cannot just rely on your own experience. If you need help on how to so that, see Help:Referencing for beginners. I am a new user myself, so I learnt how to do this just a few weeks ago.

In summary, I understand your point, but I am not sure this is the correct article on Wikipedia for your content, and I also think what you have written really needs to be referenced and more neutral. If you like, I can help you with this. Does all of that make sense? Sorry for bombarding you with information, and I hope this helps you. GreyGreenWhy (talk) 17:22, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

P.S: If you create an account, it will be easier to communicate as your IP address keeps changing. GreyGreenWhy (talk) 17:22, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

A country's diplomatic policies are a direct result of the country's culture which impacts the pscyhological mindset of the government officials that are governing their respective country. So it is first and foremost very necessary to at least touch upon the subject of cultural differences between China and Taiwan as both countries have been separated from each other for over 70 years now. Because what communist China refers to as "Chinese culture" is NOT the same culture that Taiwan refers to as "ancient Chinese culture" which they sometimes, for simplicity's sake, refer to as "Taiwanese culture." The edits previously made are all neutral and completely supported by reliable reference sources. Please state what you believe is not neutral? 106.247.28.104 (talk) 09:24, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I had typed a detailed reply, but I lost it when my internet crashed. Briefly, you emphasise certain points of difference too much, making a point about the contrast in a way not directly relevant to the subject. Perhaps this information should be in the article (under comparisons?), but not in the lead in my view. Sorry I lost all that detail, will try to add more on what I think soon. Thanks GreyGreenWhy (talk) 20:30, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

The... changes are so sweeping here, and the giant wall of text so giant and wall-like, that it's difficult to really even tell what the central dispute here is. It looks like most of the edits are just about whether Taiwan is called a country or not. It's not clear at all what differences in culture have to do with the proposed changes to the article. GMG^talk 21:24, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

No we are not talking about whether or not Communist China believes Taiwan is a country. As of now, it is an indisputed fact that both China and Taiwan are governed separately and independently of each other. Both countries have their own separate presidents, their own separate govenments and their own separate military forces and whether or not China or the so-called United Nations believes that Taiwan is or is not a country is not the point of this article. And quite frankly it doesn't matter whether people or the United Nations believes or refuse to believe that Taiwan is a country because with all due respect Taiwan is currently fully functioning as a sovereign independent country with their own democratically elected president and protected by their own military forces and until the day that communist China succeeds in taking them over, it will still be a functionally independent nation-state, these are the indisputable facts, regardless of what communist Chinese people want to believe. It is highly recommended that all people go on a vacation and visit Taiwan and take a look, the only flags you will see flying there are Taiwan's national flag, with the exception of some communist Chinese protestors at tourist hot spots in Taipei trying to make a scene. A case in point, 32 United Nations member countries currently do not recognize the country of Israel and have no diplomatic relationship with Israel. Does Israel care that these 32 UN countries don't recognize them and refuses to have diplomatic relations with them. No, not really, the country of Israel continues to just effectively function as a sovereign nation-state protected by their powerful military like in Taiwan's situation. Additionally, the new country of Kosovo is not recognized by Serbia and Serbia currently has no official diplomatic relations with Kosovo but they are still functioning effectively as a country. So we are not going to talk about recognition of countries in this article. And then we get to the case of why the country of Pakistan seceded and separated from the country of India several decades ago. The reason? Primarily cultural reasons is what precipitated the split between Pakistan and India with religious differences (which anthropologists classify as a type of "culture") being the most significant reason why they split. Both India and Pakistan share a common mutually understandable spoken language, Indians speaks Hindi while Pakistanis speak Urdu which is mutually understandable in it's spoken form. Additionally, both India and Pakistan have a similar culinary culture with the same types of Masala dosa, chutneys, currys and breads. On the other hand, Pakistan is fiercely muslim and their strong cultural belief in Islam and their subsequent psychological belief that Islam is incompatible with the culturally different Hindu religion of India is what precipitated and caused the riots, the protests and eventually the warfare that led to the split of India and Pakistan into two separate countries. Equally the same, China and Taiwan originally split because of differences in their political culture with China being communist and Taiwan being the KMT nationalists that eventually became democratic. Keep in mind that political mindset is a type of culture as defined by anthropologists. So cultural differences in the minds of these people in their respective opposing countries are what causes the friction and conflict between the two countries. It is thus logical to conclude that if they had the same culture, they would already be one unified country but they are not because they had political cultural differences 70 years ago, and add to this the fact that they've been separated from each other for over 70 years with no official contact, no mutual airline flights, no direct postal deliveries until the past few years have resulted in the divergence and development of major differences in the separate cultures of both China and Taiwan similar to the above mentioned countries. This article is primarily about the diplomatic relationship, or lack of, between China and Taiwan and, as a result, a good discussion about the cultural differences between these two countries is necessary, would you talk about diplomatic relations between North Korea or South Korea without touching upon the issue of cultural differences. Or how about talking about the diplomatic relationship between the countries of Serbia and Croatia that were both previously at war with each other and have now split into two countries. Like China and Taiwan, both Serbia and Croatia share a similar spoken language while other cultural differences exist which were very important reasons that catalyzed the split between these two countries in the first place. The perception of cultural differences in the minds of Serbians and Croatians are what caused the conflict and split during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the first place, so it is very important to talk about the cultural differences between the two countries. If you just listen to the biased non-neutral communist Chinese propaganda on their state media outlets they make it sound like both China and Taiwan have the "same" culture which to any educated scholar who has studied the history of these two countries is complete illogical nonsense. If they were the same culture, there would never have been a Chinese Civil War in the first place, there would not have a been a split of any kind and China would not have undergone a culturally destructive Cultural Revolution which was intended by Chairman Mao to eliminate and replace ancient Chinese culture and ancient traditional Chinese writing script with the new communist Chinese culture and the new communist Chinese simplified writing script. Culture, defined by anthropologists is a set of inventions or traditions that are passed down from one generation to another successive generation, and is the psychological driving and motivational force that causes people to behave in certain ways that influences their government policies which in turn influences the way that they manage their diplomatic relationships with other countries. So any proper encyclopedic article cannot effectively educate the public on the issues of Cross-Strait diplomatic relations between China and Taiwan without first covering the cultural differences between these two countries that initially caused the rift and conflict between them in the first place. 2600:8801:2E00:1DA0:7800:7E44:40BE:E34D (talk) 03:16, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

What? GMG^talk 03:24, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Anon, if you want a productive discussion you're going to have to condense this down to something that is digestible without an IV drip of coffee (i.e., not lengthy digressions into unrelated geopolitics), and suggest specific changes to the article based on sources that meet Wikipedia's standards for reliability. GMG^talk 11:20, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

I disagree, Wikipedia is not a children's book and does not need to be "condensed" or simplified in any shape or form. If you think this article is complicated why don't you take a look at the Standard Model of Physics article for comparison. It is much more complicated than this article, why don't you go suggest that we simplify and condense that physics article also??? If you want something more simple to read then please go read the article in alternate Simple English Wikipedia which is simplified and condensed and very easy to read and does not convincingly support your edits . In contrast, the article on this regular version of Wikipedia should be expanded to include more information so as to improve the article and further educate the general readership in the public. And as for reliability and verification, I have provided reliable reference sources after every sentence in the edit to back up everything. Thank you!180.35.226.33 (talk) 00:46, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

GMG's issue is not that the large paragraph is too complex, but rather that it is not presented in a concise and organised way. Very long discussion does not necessarily mean that it is complex or coherent discussion. The paragraph GMG is responding to is a single, very long chain of ideas that digresses very frequently - like a spoken rant in text form. The content of the paragraph is actually simple and not hard to understand if you can get through it - but it is very hard to read. If you want to have meaningful discussion, you have to at least organise your ideas and reduce irrelevant fluff.

I'm going to try to address the paragraph first assuming you wrote it (despite the onus being on you to present it better): I think where you are getting at is that cultural differences help qualify mainland China PRC and Taiwan ROC as separate countries in all contexts. The problem is, that when discussing formal situations as diplomatic relations, this is not really relevant. Whether it should be relevant is a matter of everyone's own philosophy. You give some historical examples where cultural differences result in different countries, but that does not imply that cultural differences equate to different countries. In fact, I can provide counterexamples from within one of the examples you used (India) where internal differences in culture do not necessarily result in different countries. Take a look a the equivalent page for Korea: the article does not push that ROK is the "true Korea", but discusses in a objective and neutral tone the political situation. China PRC and Taiwan ROC are separate countries only definitively in the de facto sense (the literal control-of-territory situation), but in the de jure sense, this is disputed whether you or I like it or not, and you need to be cognizant of this distinction when making your edits and discussing this topic.

As for your (I think they are yours; your IP keeps changing) edits, they do seem highly editorialised and not neutral. And this is coming from someone that personally agrees with many of your viewpoints. Actually, the fact that I could recognise your viewpoints just from your edits strengthens the case that your edits are too editorialised. This is an article about the rigid geopolitical aspects and formal aspects of the PRC-ROC relationship. I will start with some edits that are okay but perhaps need more discussion:

• You keep adding (Taiwan) to the end of ROC, and "mainland" or "communist" in front of "China" when referring to the PRC. I think adding "mainland" in front of China is fine in this context. Adding "(Taiwan)" at the end of ROC is also fine, but I think if it is mentioned in the beginning of the article that the ROC means the government administering Taiwan, it may not be necessary so long as it is consistent throughout the article - especially as we are mostly referring to the governmental entity and not the country as a whole.

Some of the other edits are rather questionable. I will provide a non-exhaustive list:

• Mass replacement of "side" or "state" with "country". In a de facto sense the PRC and ROC are both separate countries. But this article pertains to more a more formal discussion and the de jure situation should be considered, whether it be from the PRC's or ROC's point of view. The word "side" is used as it more correct in more situations and does not imply "non-countriness", while using "country" requires you be more careful of the context in which you are using it.
• You don't have to add "National" to "Capital", it is implied. You are just adding unnecessary fluff.
• In the table comparing governments, you add a ton of extra adjectives to both the ROC and PRC government descriptions where they are not necessary and conflate rigid government organisation (unitary state, presidential republic) with more other concepts regarding the current status of the country such as the level of democratisation and development. The fact that the ROC is a developed country or that the PRC is a "superpower" has nothing to do with the rigid description of the government.
• The same can be said about the descriptions of Traditional and Simplified characters. Are your descriptions true? Perhaps (though oversimplified). But that is really not relevant in this context, and it looks like someone pushing their position, and readers can find out more about the difference in their respective articles in a greater and more nuanced detail.
• Under "Interpretation of the Relations", you added the description of Ma's remarks that it was "his own subjective personal belief". Of course it is - it says right before he was asked for his views, you do not to say that separately again. Doing so just makes it look like you are pushing a point.
• Your edits to what happened in 1949 is a bit messy. At the time, the capital being moved to Taipei was provisional; the KMT intended to take back the mainland at that time. In addition, the way you reworded what happened with the PRC is messier than what it said before.
• Although some of your sources for your added detail about the ROC military are legitimate, you did cite clickbait, such as top 10 lists. This really doesn't help your claims of credibility.

The following edit is outright incorrect.

• The Entry and Exit Permit issued by the ROC is not a visa, and the ROC does not claim it is a visa. The ROC still technically claims the PRC as its territory even with Tsai in office, and de jure is is a special travel document.

I could go on, but ultimately the onus falls on you to defend your changes, which are quite significant and quite editorialised, in a rigorous and organised fashion. You really need to do better than write a speech superficially making comparisons to other unrelated situations in a wall of text. The onus also falls on you to provide reliable sources for your discussion on this talk page. T.c.w7468 (talk) 05:16, 22 February 2018 (UTC) minor edit made T.c.w7468 (talk) 06:03, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you T.c.w7468 for doing the research and taking the time to give a detailed response to the IP. I agree with everything you have said. GreyGreenWhy (talk) 20:18, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Chinese phrase discussion in header section

In a similar vein to the discussion above on correct usage of "mainland" and "Taiwan" vs. "PRC" and "ROC", it seems that in the bullet points ending the header section, "pro-PRC" would be clearer and more appropriate than "pro-China." Current version: "There is also no commonly used Chinese language phrase equivalent to the latter two phrases, although "Mainland–Taiwan relations" is occasionally used by pro-China sources." Proposed version: "There is also no commonly used Chinese language phrase equivalent to the latter two phrases, although "Mainland–Taiwan relations" is occasionally used by pro-PRC sources." Kmva (talk) 01:36, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Sino-Russian relations since 1991 which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 15:00, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Taiwan replaced with ROC entirely?

What is going on with this article? The last [1] was constructive, but it also blanked nearly all references to the name "Taiwan" as well as references to the PRC being communist. Considering the actual article for the country is called, you know, "Taiwan", isn't that breaking NPOV? (That article unambiguously refers to Taiwan as a state as well) I don't know how this even be perfectly neutral, does this article have a major NPOV problem? — Preceding unsigned comment added by PapaMichael (talk • contribs) 13:58, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

As a Taiwanese, I would say Taiwan and ROC are interchangeable. Because PRC insists that it is the sole representation of China, Taiwan is preferable to ROC. --It's gonna be awesome!✎Talk♬ 18:03, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Politics Table Layout

The current layout is this:

{|align=thumb
|valign=top|{{Politics of China}}
|valign=top|{{Politics of Taiwan}}
|}

I think it looks nicer without the table, but then the horizontal timeline is too long and there's a huge amount of whitespace on my browser. So if anyone can fix these to appear correctly on the right, I think it would be beneficial. Wqwt (talk) 06:54, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

"Bilateral" box

This reasoning by Fizikanauk is at best a flimsy application of WP:OSE.

1. File:China map.png (purple for PRC; orange for ROC) already provides a similar, and arguably far better, map as to the Infobox's File:China_Taiwan_Locator.png (green for PRC and orange for ROC, along with global inset). Why is the former far better? It provides detailed overview (by individual coloration) of the South China Sea islands (such as Pratas) and lesser islands in the Taiwan Strait, whereas the latter does not at all; at the default resolution, the latter map barely registers the island of Taiwan at all. Nor does the latter map locate the two respective seats of government, Beijing and Taipei. In addition, the delineation of the global inset has terrible contrastwith the rest of the "zoomed-in" map.
2. The flags are already present in {{Infobox Chinese}} (and soon I will add an explicit caption) as well as "#Comparison of the two states".
3. The infobox did not exist on this page until 13 August 2013 CaradhrasAiguo (talk) 07:18, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

The bilateral map has been existing almost five years as you provided and it provides more scales on where the two states exist in the world. The existing figures only zooms at East Asia and provide no information about the location in the world, article like Mexico–United States relations also has maps with multiple scales.Fizikanauk (talk) 15:57, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Except Taiwan Strait#Geography has an entire gallery titled The geo-location of Taiwan Strait placing the strait in perspective with the rest of the world. And {{Infobox bilateral relations}} was meant to be used with the {{{mission1}}}, {{{envoytitle1}}}, {{{envoy1}}} used, as is the case with Mexico–United States relations, Canada–United States relations, etc.

If this remains intransigent (and I believe it will be if only Fizikanauk and I are "involved"), I think a WP:RfC will be required. CaradhrasAiguo (talk) 18:27, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

The diplomatic mission entry was there before this edit. I oppose this change for articles like North Korea–South Korea relations also lists the non-mission bilateral relation handling authorities as the de facto missions. The bilateral box without missions are common among those countries with bad relations, for example North Korea–United States relations, Iran–United States relations, even for countries with out articles for their missions France–Germany relations. Fizikanauk (talk) 18:46, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

I concede the diplomatic mission point. However, having just looked at both Inter-Korean relations and Franco–German relations, neither article's locator map.svg has a global scale. So the claim that China_Taiwan_Locator.png is better because of other relations articles having a global scale, is even weaker. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 19:09, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

I did not say China_Taiwan_Locator.png by itself is better. I said the two figures together give the reader a better multi-scale knowledge of this bilateral relations. Infobox Bilateral relations serves as an overview of the relations, there is no reason this article should be an exception. Adding back the diplomatic information before this edit will provide additional information compare to the territory figure. Fizikanauk (talk) 23:31, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Both Inter-Korean relations and Franco–German relations do not have a global scale, and all four states mentioned therein are orders of magnitude smaller in area than the PRC. Linking to both East Asia and Taiwan Strait should suffice (as is already done with or without this useless infobox). Per WP:NOTGALLERY, there is no reason for this facetious redundancy turning the lede into an image repository to satisfy, just admit it, someone's partisan fantasies.

there is no reason this article should be an exception The reason being A) one of the states has limited recognition AND B) neither state recognizes the other. The Cross-Strait situation has no equivalent elsewhere. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 06:11, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Both articles you provided contains a single picture in the Infobox Bilateral relations. From this convention of similar bilateral relations pages and WP:NOTGALLERY, the second map should be deleted. Fizikanauk (talk) 17:50, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Nope, the locator map is completely redundant and does not show any islands other than Hainan or Taiwan, and, as there is no way to provide a caption, the infobox should be deleted. And, as I noted, the Cross-Strait situation is not similar to bilateral relations pages. Pretending it is is a distortion and nakedly pushing POV. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 21:12, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

The consensus of Wikipedia community regarding bilateral relations is obvious. This article is the main article of Category:Cross-Strait relations, and the category is a subcategory of Category:Bilateral relations of China (PRC) and Category:Bilateral relations of Taiwan (ROC) since it was created. Thus, Infobox Bilateral relations has a reason to stay. A broader discussion would be required if you want to challenge this long standing consensus. The maps are not redundant as they are in different scope, there are also other articles show maps that emphasize minor islands in separate maps, like France–United Kingdom relations. Fizikanauk (talk) 22:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Speak for yourself as to what is "obvious to the Wikipedia community"; there is no Manual of Style or WikiProject guideline mandating the usage of infobox, or else you would have referenced it by now. The boilerplate map is redundant to the text, as I have repeatedly stated, and vastly inferior to the islands map. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 22:59, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Infoboxes serve as the summary of key features of the page's subject. In other articles, almost all information contains in the infobox can be found elsewhere in the article, this is the purpose of the infobox and not a redundancy. As no wikipolicy forbid or enforce the use of infoboxes, Infobox Bilateral relations are designed for articles on bilateral relations, this is a good reason for this article to include this Infobox Bilateral relations. Aside from the image issue, Infobox Bilateral relations can also include diplomatic missions that was deleted by this edit. Regarding the image, China_Taiwan_Locator.png provides a larger scope of the relations on earth. This information is not included in the second map, the locator it is neither redundant nor inferior to the islands map. Given the two images provide complementary information to each other, the two images together give the reader broader knowledge on cross-Strait relations than only one image. Fizikanauk (talk) 08:18, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

The template {{Infobox bilateral relations}} should be deleted from this article

The template {{Infobox bilateral relations}} shows the two parties' map at the top, the two parties' names in the middle, and the two parties' diplomatic missions at the bottom. The latter two are so controversial and biased in this article because they prefer to support Taiwan independence by listing the two parties' so-called common names "China" and "Taiwan", and their so-called "diplomatic missions". However, it makes a big mistake. (1. Only Taiwan independence supporters claim "Cross-Strait relations" as "China–Taiwan relations". 2. Taiwan Affairs Office and Mainland Affairs Council are the agencys founded by the government of the People's Republic of China and government of the Republic of China respectively, dealing with the affairs about the regions controlled by opposite sides. In other words, they are the agencys to deal with regional affairs, instead of diplomatic affairs. For the diplomatic affairs, People's Republic of China and Republic of China have their own "Ministry of Foreign Affairs" respectively. However, the two regimes never recognize each other). It seriously disobeys the One-China policy obeyed by most countries of the international community. In addition, "Cross-Strait relations" is so ambiguous and controversial, because it can refer to the relations between the two regions: Chinese mainland and Taiwan area, or between the two regimes: People's Republic of China and Republic of China. However, the template {{Infobox bilateral relations}} can't show the two relations at the same time. Besides, it is obviously accepted by everyone to use the neutral term "Cross-Strait relations". In conclusion, due to the dispute on political status of Taiwan, the template {{Infobox bilateral relations}} isn't appropriate for this article. Thus, it should be deleted from this article.

For the short description, in order to show the two meanings of "Cross-Strait relations", it should say, "Relations between the two regions: Chinese mainland and Taiwan area, or between the two regimes: People's Republic of China and Republic of China." This article's short description in Wikidata says, "Relations between the People's Republic of China (Mainland China) and Republic of China (Taiwan)", which should be changed as my suggestions, because the Wikidata version prefers to support Chen Shui-bian's Taiwan independence opinion: One Country on Each Side.

For the map File:China Taiwan Locator.png, it can be used alone in this article, with the map caption "Territories controlled by PRC (green), territories controlled by ROC (orange)."

For the section "Comparison of the two states", considering the dispute on political status of Taiwan and keeping the neutralism of this article (in other words, avoid any words can imply Taiwan independence), 1. The section should be renamed as "Comparison of the two political entities". 2. Only use the two political entities' official names (in other words, delete the two political entities' so-called common names with the same reasons for deletion of the template {{Infobox bilateral relations}}, especially avoiding Chen Shui-bian's Taiwan independence opinion: One Country on Each Side). 3. For the issue "Area", it is better to add the template {{ref}} to the area of the Republic of China, says, "It is only the area of the Free area of the Republic of China, the sole region de facto controlled by Republic of China". 123.150.182.179 14:19, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Regardless of your position on the de jure status of Taiwan, they have, de facto, common names and diplomatic missions. This infobox doesn't represent a WP:NPOV error. Furthermore edit summaries calling it "treasonous" do not engender much hope this is motivated by Wikipedia's values. Simonm223 (talk) 16:01, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

I had already provided other arguments which Fizikanauk simply ignored (unlike you, I will leave it to others to infer his motives), and the "common name" argument applies to article titles only. In a specialized context such as Cross-Strait relations, precision is required by WP:NC-CN. (edit conflict) The clumsy infobox template as it stands won't allow for it (note how in both versions the mainland/PRC half of the infobox only displays as "China"). CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 16:15, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I've reviewed your previous argument. I do agree with you that there's absolutely no requirement to have any infobox (honestly I generally dislike the things) and I also concur that there's no requirement nor particular benefit in the global scale element of the map. However I do think having a link to the diplomatic missions and a map is generally a net-positive to the article. What I'd propose would be to move the row on diplomatic missions to below the current purple and orange map. If we do that, I'd be happy to see the redundant infobox gone. Simonm223 (talk) 16:20, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

I would be glad to work on in-sandbox tests of your suggested row implementation if I have the time later today. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 16:26, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Simonm223 (talk) 16:53, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Section "Interpretation of the relations by sitting leaders"

I added to this section because previously it only contained the interpretation of *one* of Taiwan's leaders to now contain interpretations from various leaders through history. But I think there's significant overlap between this and the "history" section, and it should probably be merged in. I'll leave this here for discussion and do it some time later if there are no objections. DrIdiot (talk) 07:39, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I think the "2008 meetings" sections can also be merged in with "history"; don't quite see the rationale for having it separately. DrIdiot (talk) 07:43, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Hong Kong?

The section "Cultural, educational, religious and sporting exchanges" contains a few references to Hong Kong. Should Hong Kong be included in this article? I would argue no, since TW has long maintained a relationship with HK independently of PRC and today still treats it rather differently. In particular I think number of HK students in Taiwan doesn't reflect anything about ROC-PRC relationships and should probably not be here (maybe in a TW-HK relations article). DrIdiot (talk) 07:50, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

2016 meme campaign section

I think this section should be removed. First, it doesn't reflect "public opinion" -- it was a campaign waged by a specific group of organized actors. Secondly, those actors are not official, so why does it belong on this page? I think it's worth having a section that discusses public opinion in the PRC if we can find some RS for it, but I suspect this would be difficult. DrIdiot (talk) 07:53, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

West Taiwan

Fueled by various happening in 2020, Taiwan-supporting netizens have started adopting the term to refer to mainland China. Should it be noted? News mention in English: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3858643 14.248.108.247 (talk) 12:37, 29 October 2020 (UTC)