Talk:Chinese provinces and regions

See Talk:China for my reasoning in creating this (WT-en) Pashley 07:10, 3 May 2006 (EDT)


 * Your reasoning is sound. Typically we use these "list of X" articles just to make sure we covered all the bases. --(WT-en) Evan 07:52, 3 May 2006 (EDT)

List of Chinese provinces and regions
Moved from User talk:(WT-en) Wrh2

I noticed you removed Taiwan, but since that particular list is of the political geography of China (the official political divisions, which need to represent reality), it should remain on the list. I have no invested interest in the politics of Taiwan's status as independent versus Chinese, but this list is intending to be factual, so it should show that rather than Wikivoyage hierarchy, which is in the actual articles. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 130.49.162.58 (talk • contribs)


 * See Project:Be fair. Adding Taiwan to the list of Chinese provinces will undoubtedly result in someone from Taiwan removing that addition, so the Wikivoyage compromise is to defer to whatever is most appropriate for travelers in situations where there are political disputes.  The same goes for situations such as Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Argentina and the Falkland Islands, etc. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 14:03, 20 October 2009 (EDT)


 * I added a couple of lines about Taiwan. (WT-en) Pashley 21:25, 20 October 2009 (EDT)


 * Seems like a reasonable compromise, thanks! -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 21:34, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

VFD Discussion

 * Keep. This one was part of the mass Project:Votes for deletion/May_2010 nomination, and as often happens when multiple articles are nominated together there were arguments made for keeping this article separately from the other list articles.  User:(WT-en) Pashley argued in favor of keeping this article, which seems fine to me. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 22:05, 30 May 2010 (EDT)

Result: Kept. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 23:45, 14 June 2010 (EDT)

Reason for this article?
I looked at the linked Vfd thread and also Talk:China/Archive 2003-2012, and I still don't understand why this is a Wikivoyage article. It seems a heck of a lot more like a Wikipedia article. Where's the travel-related content in this article that couldn't be very briefly summarized in the China article? I'd propose to put this text back into the China article and remove the rest as superfluous:

Most of the country is broken up into provinces (省), but there are several other geographic units of the same hierarchical rank as provinces:


 * Various ethnic groups have autonomous regions (自治区), although their autonomy is far from complete. For the traveler, these can generally be thought of as provinces, but in political discussions the distinction may be important. In these regions, the language spoken by the relevant minority ethnic group is typically co-official with Mandarin.
 * There are four municipalities (市) which are not part of provinces, but independent entities whose leaders report directly to Beijing. The smallest of these, Tianjin, has a population well over 10 million. The largest, Chongqing, has over 30 million residents.
 * Hong Kong and Macau are special administrative regions (SARs，特别行政区). These are former colonies &mdash; Hong Kong British and Macau Portuguese &mdash; that rejoined China in the late 90s. Their economies and distinct political systems are allowed to flourish under separate regulatory regimes from the mainland under the slogan "One country, two systems", an arrangement that the Chinese government has promised to maintain until at least 2047. The SARs have their own currencies, issue their own visas, and elect their own representative assemblies through a combination of direct and indirect representation.

There is some ambiguity when one uses place names in China. For example "Chengdu" can mean either the city itself or the entire prefecture which includes significant amounts of countryside, many villages and some "small" towns with population anywhere up to a few hundred thousand. Moreover, when someone says their hometown is Chengdu, it might mean their family and identity papers are from there even if they actually grew up elsewhere.

I'm not sure the information in "Lower-level divisions" is important enough to include anywhere, but if it is, I think it can be very briefly summarized like this:

Provinces and regions are generally broken up into prefectures and prefecture-level cities. Where a given minority or minorities predominate, the prefecture can be an Autonomous Prefecture (自治州) for the various ethnic groups. Within prefectures and cities, autonomous or otherwise, there are also Autonomous Counties (自治县) depending on their ethnic composition. Like the autonomous regions, the relevant minority language is usually co-official with Mandarin in these areas.

If people want to know more about the minutiae of lower-level Chinese political divisions, there has to be some long encyclopedic article in Wikipedia they can read. I mean, nowhere is there a Wikivoyage article about political divisions in the U.S. explaining that most American states are divided into counties, each with a county seat that functions as the capital of the county, that in some states such as in New England, there are townships that are more important than counties and may contain several villages, whereas this is not the case in x, y and z others, or the fact that Alaska doesn't have counties but does have boroughs, though some of them have no separate tertiary governments and not all territory in the state is in an organized borough. I mean, really, as a traveler, who cares? Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:05, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * The administrative structure in China is particularly hard to grasp for a lot of English-speaking travelers. The first two times I was in China, I found the lower-level divisions incredibly confusing. I found myself in a totally rural area that I'd been told was part of the big city of Suzhou, and then I went to Jiangyan, officially part of Taizhou, but when I said we were in "Taizhou" people would correct me. I encountered "counties" and "towns" located inside "cities", and "villages" in completely urban areas. If I had read this article first, I wouldn't have been confused about any of that. On the other hand, I'm not sure the list of provinces or the details about SEZs and treaty ports are so important. I'm okay with merging the important content into China. —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:55, 6 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I created this years ago because there seemed to be too much material about these divisions in the China article. That still seems valid to me; moving it back would complicate an already large article. There are a large number of links to it, mostly to specific sections when a term like "Special Economic Zone", "Treaty Port" or "Special administrative region" crops up.
 * The ambiguities Granger mentions are pervasive and can be quite confusing. See Talk:Fuzhou for one example & links to others. Pashley (talk) 00:45, 7 January 2019 (UTC)


 * OK, so the ambiguities are travel-relevant. But what else is? I don't think the fact that it's linked to matters when considering whether to merge some of the content back to the China guide and deleting the rest. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:03, 7 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Not only the ambiguities, but the confusingness of, for instance, a bus stop named "X Y Village" in the middle of a bunch of high-rises in a big city. Anyway, if the content about SEZs and treaty ports needs to be kept too, then this becomes a lot of content to merge into the China article, which is already one of the longest articles on the site (significantly longer than the US article). —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:30, 7 January 2019 (UTC)


 * It makes sense for the largest country in population and 3rd-largest in area to have one of the longest articles. But do you really think all of this information is necessary in a travel guide? Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:08, 7 January 2019 (UTC)


 * No, I agree that it can be cut down. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:49, 7 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Which paragraphs do you consider essential? Maybe we can agree on that, first, before again taking up whether to merge the content back into the China article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:47, 7 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I'd say the paragraphs you quoted above are important, and at least a good summary of the "Lower-level divisions" section is needed too. I'm not sure how much of the "Development zones" and "Treaty ports and concessions" sections are needed. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:39, 8 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I'd say the "Treaty ports" section is relevant to a "History" section, nothing about current-day Chinese political divisions. However, "Development zones" is interesting background. One thing it's lacking is a mention of whether "Development in these areas has been phenomenal" encompasses Kashgar. Does it?


 * After the discussion we've had so far, I'd propose to keep these sections: (1) "Province-level divisions", not including "A full list of province-level divisions" or any text below that; (2) the second paragraph of the lede, starting with "There is some ambiguity when one uses place names in China"; (3) "Lower-level divisions". The "Development zones" section should also be kept (whether edited somewhat for brevity or not, and possibly with information about whether Kashgar has been greatly developed added) but put in a different part of the China article, because the text in that section consists more of background than information about political divisions. Of course the background is about SEZs and cities where investment is encouraged, but I think the pendulum there is more toward socio-economic explanation than political divisions per se.


 * Is this really too much to add back to the China article, since "Treaty ports and concessions" would be deleted or summarized for merging with the "History" section and most of the "Province-level divisions" section would be deleted as not necessary (with the info about Taiwan redundant if it were merged back into the China article)? Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:01, 9 January 2019 (UTC)


 * That sounds fine to me, though I'd like to hear User:Pashley's thoughts. —Granger (talk · contribs) 03:31, 10 January 2019 (UTC)


 * (Undent) OK with me if there's a consensus that way, though I still see no good reason to delete this.
 * I also see no reason to get rid of "A full list of province-level divisions", even in the China article. Pashley (talk) 04:17, 10 January 2019 (UTC)


 * The reason is that all the provinces are listed in China, and if you want to know the Chinese characters for a province, all you need to do is click over to the page for that province. This article wouldn't be deleted, though; it would be redirected, and the text being removed could certainly be added to Talk:China as a reference. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:44, 10 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm ambivalent about this but if we can cover information about all 50 U.S. states within the United States of America article, there must be some way we can cover all this information in a succinct way in the main China article. Information about sub-divisions under the provincial levels could perhaps be covered in the individual province articles. The dog2 (talk) 06:21, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Taiwan
I object to this edit, replacing references to "Taiwanese government" with "ROC". I almost just reverted it, but decided to discuss instead.

Yes, we need to mention some of the history and the terms "PRC" & "ROC", but neither term should be used beyond that. Nor should politically loaded terms like "Red China" or "Taiwan Province". Even "mainland China" should be used sparingly, only when required to avoid ambiguity. The correct terms here are China, Taiwan, Chinese government & Taiwanese government.

Other opinions? User:The dog2? Pashley (talk) 09:05, 16 April 2021 (UTC)


 * I'd also remove the text about Kinmen & Matsu, which I see as not needed here. Pashley (talk) 09:36, 16 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I don't see the need for us to be politically correct in a travel guide. Simply using terms like "Taiwan" and "Taiwanese government" makes things easier to read from a traveller's perspective. I, for one, never say "I'm going to the ROC." I always just use the term "Taiwan". As for Kinmen and Matsu, keep them. The description of their statuses is appropriate given that this article is about Chinese provinces. Officially, both the PRC and ROC consider them to be part of Fujian, but they are controlled by the Taiwanese government, which is why we treat them as part of Taiwan. A significant portion of the Hokkien people in Singapore trace their ancestry to Kinmen (see for an example, although she was born in Kinmen and moved to Singapore during World War II), and you'll never hear them say they are of Taiwanese descent.  The dog2 (talk) 15:43, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Didn't see this discussion before I reverted, but I agree with The dog2. —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:52, 16 April 2021 (UTC)