Template:Did you know nominations/The Concept of Active Defence in China's Military Strategy

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by BuySomeApples (talk) 19:25, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

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The Concept of Active Defence in China's Military Strategy

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Created by Venkat TL (talk). Self-nominated at 09:23, 16 December 2021 (UTC).

  • The quotes in a review are in the wrong area. "Writing for The Wire, Manoj Joshi in his review suggests that the book seeks to unravel “the riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” of Chinese military strategy and strongly recommends that the book "should be [a] compulsory reading in our [India's] military institutions". compared to "Amrita Jash has done a signal service in trying to put together a publication that seeks to unravel “the riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” of Chinese military strategy for the Indian reader." The sentence should be rewritten so that the quotes can be placed before seeks and then after strategy. The quotes for "The book seeks to unravel "the riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" of Chinese military strategy. in the Content section is the same way. I know that there are quotes in the middle of the quote, but the other content is still being lifted from the source. There are two parts that are exactly like the source that need to be reworded - "the directions of contemporary Chinese military thinking" and "deliberate deception to camouflage offensive action". The direct quotes for "Indian Navy's Captain Gurpreet S. Khurana in his review for the MP-IDSA's Journal of Defence Studies suggests that the book attempts "to answer some key questions of immense relevance today about China as a neighbour, as well as China as a major global power. [...] as the author says, ‘What entails China's rise?’" are misplaced compared to the source. SL93 (talk) 01:48, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Manoj Joshi is quoting from the book, hence he used the quotes in his review. Rest of your comment/suggestion is not clear. Can you please elaborate more? Venkat TL (talk) 08:51, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
      • Venkat TL I realize that. However, the content that you lift from a reviewer's words need to be directly quoted as well. I fixed those issues as they are minor. There are only a few other issues. There are two parts that are exactly like the source that need to be reworded - "the directions of contemporary Chinese military thinking" and "deliberate deception to camouflage offensive action". Manoj Joshi's quote is in the content section and the reception section - it would be better if there were no repeats. If you remove the same sentence from the content section, the article will still be long enough for DYK. SL93 (talk) 15:05, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
        • Thank you. Based on your suggestions, I made a few copy edits. Venkat TL (talk) 15:15, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
          • You're welcome. The article is long enough and new enough with no copyright violations. It is neutral. A QPQ is not needed. The promoter can choose the hook. SL93 (talk) 15:17, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
            • I don't think these hooks work – they are presenting an opinion from this opinion piece as a fact. WP:RSOPINION is relevant. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 15:57, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
              • Mx. Granger, it is a book review for the book that is the subject of the article. I think the news site TheWire has put this book review in the wrong section. Venkat TL (talk) 15:59, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
                • A book review sounds like an opinion piece to me, and in any case the source labels it as an opinion piece. We can't present an author's opinions in wikivoice as if they're facts. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 16:01, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
                  • The beginning of the title of the article itself says "Book Review: Unravelling the Enigmatic Chinese Military and its Idea of 'Active Defence'". How else can we source an article about a book, if not from book review? I think this should be allowed. This is my first nomination. I have no idea how other Did You Know Nominations on books have proceeded. I think we need advice from folks familiar with Wikipedia articles on books. Venkat TL (talk) 16:10, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
                    • ALT1: ... that according to reviewer Manoj Joshi, The Concept of Active Defence in China's Military Strategy is in reality "active offence"? ALT1 would work due to the reviewer having an article, but someone else would need to approve my alt hook. Mx. Granger added part of the content so I will tag for a reviewer for the alt. SL93 (talk) 16:13, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
                      • Ok. This seems to be a complex process. I have no idea what I am supposed to do right now. If anyone is expecting me to do something, please ping me and say explicitly.Venkat TL (talk) 16:22, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
                        • Not really complex. Someone that didn't contribute to the article or the review needs to verify ALT1 to see if it is acceptable. You don't need to do anything right now. SL93 (talk) 16:24, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Is ALT1 acceptable? First, an overview of the article, in order to put the ALTs into context of the subject at hand. The subject is the book.

I think the article as it stands is not neutral, and that the ALTs which repeat a non-neutral point of view are treading on dangerous ground. To balance the article, the creator would do well to read through the Journal of Defence Studies review in full, and summarise the very complex arguments in the article. Whether that review is just somebody's opinion or not, it does make clear that the book is very carefully and at length discussing all the background and subtlety of the situation, and not putting forward one accusation (that China is pretending to have a defence policy, but that it really has an attack policy).

Subtlety is an interesting word. People may think it is to do with craftiness and plotting, but really subtlety is something which, as you stare at it, seems to change before your eyes into one thing and then into another thing. That effect occurs because you are looking at something which is neither one thing nor the other, but is in reality something else and/or a combination of both things or various things. The Journal of Defence Studies review appears to recognise that. The Manoj Joshi review quoted in the above ALTs appears to be a knee-jerk reaction based on what the West expects China to be up to, and (as I understand it) the context of that knee-jerk reaction could be the fact that the West is already doing that very thing - as the JDS review says.

So my suggestion is that the creator should re-write the article in a neutral manner, presenting all the complexities mentioned in the JDS review, besides the Manoj Joshi review. Once that is acceptable, we can then look for an ALT which represents the subject of the article in a balanced manner.

I should add that my stance here is not biased east-west or vice versa. I do recognise that China has a far, far older and far more complex philosophical attitude to war and politics than the West has ever had - and there is the language barrier. That makes it difficult to fully understand and respect each other. But in this article, we do need to make a good attempt to try to understand, using the few sources that we have for this subject, then we need to treat the subject with respect. In case any of the above is not clear, my response to the above ALTs is a no - but its worth trying again. Storye book (talk) 14:39, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Insert "DYK maybe" icon based on the thorough review above. Flibirigit (talk) 19:25, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
I will try to fix the pointed issues. Need some time. Venkat TL (talk) 13:31, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
It has been over a month, Venkat TL has yet to make any edits at all to address the issues raised back on January 2, and a ping to their talk page was archived without any action. It's time to close this nomination as unsuccessful. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:39, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
BlueMoonset, sorry for the late reply, I had been busy in other stuff. I still intend to fix the concerns. I will update this once I am done. Venkat TL (talk) 06:57, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
Venkat TL, it has taken too long already. If the fixes have not been made by 25 February, I will be closing the nomination at that time, assuming no one beats me to it. Please make your plans accordingly. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:51, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
@BlueMoonset and Venkat TL: I'm closing this nomination since none of the article's issues have been fixed since January 2, and the article has had no major improvements since December. BuySomeApples (talk) 19:25, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
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