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Talk:Sinosphere

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Latest comment: 6 days ago by Remsense in topic Mongolia
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Propose to use "Sinitic" instead of "East Asian" because of people (mis)using geography to exclude Vietnam from the Sinosphere

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Latest comment: 5 months ago7 comments4 people in discussion

As this article was recently moved from "East Asian cultural sphere" to "Sinosphere" I'd like to raise attention to an issue I've noticed across articles about this topic, namely that people keep removing Vietnam from articles related to shared cultural practices from across the Sinosphere, the motivations for this can include Vietnamese nationalists who dislike China (a similar breed exists in Korea who make the same arguments), to geographic absolutists saying "Vietnam is Southeast Asian" and "Vietnam doesn't have an East Asian character".

I've noticed an odd trend when working with these articles and that is that geography is misused to try to exclude Vietnam from any topics related to the Sinosphere. In this version of the article on Sinitic seals one can clearly see that the seal culture of Vietnam which is identical with that of China, Japan, and Korea is regarded as "less important" in Vietnam and Vietnamese history. In fact, for years the Philippines was placed above Vietnam and had detailed information about a completely unrelated seal culture while dismissing their usage in Vietnam. The way the article is currently written also suggests that when the French arrived these seals just disappeared and that Vietnam's current seal culture is somehow different from that in the People's Republic of China. None of which are true, currently the traditional seal is still used as a personal seal in Vietnam in exactly the same way as it is being used in Mainland China, likewise the claim "Government seals in the People's Republic of China today are usually circular in shape, and have a five-pointed star in the centre of the circle. The name of the governmental institution is arranged around the star in a semicircle – a form also adopted by some company chops." also fully applies to Vietnam, though government seals typically use the emblem of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam while companies use their name, not too dissimilar from Chinese government seals. This doesn't just apply to this particular case, it also applies elsewhere as Vietnam is often excluded from "East Asian" topics because Vietnam is "Not East Asian". This often leads to many articles about topics which are identical in Vietnamese culture to those found in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cultures to be excluded, see examples, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Copying from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Lachy70&oldid=1157388933

== "Vietnam is not East Asian" ==

I don't know who else to consult, I saw you revert some of their POV edits in 2022 but I'm not sure who else actually cares about this. I noticed that a lot of articles about the Sinosphere seem to exclude Vietnam but I didn't know why this was or why information of Vietnam always seemed to be missing from these articles. I thought that this was the co-ordinated effort of lots of Sinophobic / Missinitic (however you call "anti-Chinese") Vietnamese nationalists but looking over the editing history of some of these articles I can see that it's often a single person that is to blame:

At this point it becomes clear to me that they envision a geographical East Asian cultural sphere from which Vietnam must be excluded.

Whatever their motivations for doing so, this is clearly pushing a POV, a POV which very much tries to erase Vietnam from the Sinosphere purely because it is not geographically in "East Asia". I am not sure how active you are with these articles, but it seems like this person went out of their way to remove content about Vietnam even when the article wasn't explicitly about East Asia. This isn't unique to the English-language Wikipedia either, I often see this at the Mandarin-language Wikipedia too, but I didn't realise that this was all basically done by one person here. --Donald Trung (talk) 14:51, 27 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I agree, his reasoning for removal of content do not justify his actions. He is clearly pushing a POV. Most of his removals claim that Vietnamese is irreverent to Sinosphere even though many sources have stated that Vietnam has tremendous Chinese cultural influence.
I am not particular active on some of these articles, but I did try to revert most of his changes when applicable. Lachy70 (talk) 06:20, 28 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
Their argument is that historical Chinese influence in Vietnam is "irrelevant" because of geography, but they themselves define this geography which is clearly vandalism, unfortunately I am not allowed to report vandalism so I often see vandals on my watchlist that I can't do anything about.
Anyhow, I saw the amazing articles you wrote about those books about Vietnamese culture, I am looking forward to see more of your creations in the future. -- — Donald Trung (talk) 08:42, 28 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

END QUOTE.

Copied the entire thing for context.

Academics have also adopted another approach, rather than describing "Chinese" influence they will use "Sinitic" influence (this article uses "Sinic" but I haven't personally encountered that claim yet). From an entitled “Academic Dependency Theory and the Politics of Agency in Area Studies: The Case of Anglophone Vietnamese Studies from the 1960s to the 2010s,” the article was written by Chang Yufen of National Taipei University and it looks at English-language scholarship on premodern Vietnamese history from the perspective of academic dependency theory.

This paper uses terms like "Literary Sinitic" to refer to "Literary Chinese" due to the perception of using "Chinese" in this regard and it's to differentiate historical Chinese influence from modern China. Judging from the above, would it be wise to replace the geographically misleading term "East Asian" to refer to the Sinosphere with "Sinitic"? --Donald Trung (talk) 09:23, 28 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

I forgot to add to the above that they are not the only user doing that, user "Laska666" (a Champa nationalist) wrote a large number of articles and content expansions that tried to minimise Chinese influence in Vietnam and deliberately tried to remove references to Chinese influence in Vietnam. The motivations of these people are very wide and diverse, but the result is the same, Vietnam is seen as "the other". Another great example is this rant on this very talk page. The talking points from this diatribe are also found in Korean nationalist historiography, particularly North Korean historiography.
TL;DR: I am proposing to change "East Asian" to "Sinitic" in related articles because people keep misusing "East Asian" to exclude Vietnam, even if "East Asia and Vietnam" was being used. --Donald Trung (talk) 09:35, 28 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
I am for this change although it will likely raise concerns similar to the ones here over the name change. To a laymen's eyes, the difference between Sinitic, Sinosphere or any of the other words with the Sin- prefix may be moot. I am sure they are aware of what was meant in the first place when they erased Vietnam from the "East Asian+" category and will do the same even more so with the Sinitic label. Qiushufang (talk) 10:33, 28 May 2023 (UTC)Reply
It seems like little momentum arose from this proposal. I agree with it, and I'll be trying to get momentum for change on other pages. 211.43.120.242 (talk) 11:07, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Pages using "East Asia" in place of the Sinosphere

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Latest comment: 4 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I opened a move discussion on Talk:Seal (East Asia)#Requested move 3 July 2024 -> "Seals in the Sinosphere". Invite others to participate in it.

This page isn't alone though; there's more pages that use "East Asia" when they should be using "Sinosphere" or some similar term. For example, East Asian age reckoning; Vietnam use(s/d) the age reckoning, so "East Asia" isn't strictly correct. I'll be keeping an eye out for more pages like this.

Depending on how the seal move discussion goes, I'll consider opening move discussions on other pages that similarly leave out Vietnam. 211.43.120.242 (talk) 10:52, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

It's difficult: while the broadest audience may or may not include or exclude Vietnam when they hear "East Asia", "Sinosphere" is essentially a technical term, so I pause when adopting it systematically in all articles, even if it is more accurate. As one may imagine, there's considerable reservations about the term in some scholarship also, but in my personal opinion it is very difficult to have a term that both accurately identifies the origin and largest "constituent" of a cultural region, while adequately communicating the cosmopolitan and multifaceted nature of said cultural region: I think "Sinosphere" is about the best we've done so far, as "sino-" correctly identifies the particular place of China but omits much of the lexical assumption one might include when hearing "Chinese" as such (e.g. specific ethnic, national, or linguistic character)
That is to say, replacing "East Asia" with "Sinosphere" in titles essentially prioritizes precision over recognizability and naturalness per the naming convention criteria: I'm fine with that, but we should be clear that that's our priority here. Remsense诉 16:30, 11 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Agreed with your take and well articulated, thanks. 211.43.120.242 (talk) 00:33, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

East Asian culture

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Latest comment: 1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion

@Remsense, both Culture of East Asia and East Asian cultural sphere redirect to this page, but this page is only narrowly focused on Chinese cultural elements that are found throughout East Asia, rather than giving a proper understanding of all relevant cultural elements (such as Western-origin elements). GreekApple123 (talk) 18:20, 22 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Right—so what is being disambiguated? If I typed in those things and got here, there's no confusion at any point. If anything, you'd want to retarget the redirect. Remsense ‥ 论 19:03, 22 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Alright, I've gone ahead and retargeted the redirects. Thanks GreekApple123 (talk) 19:28, 22 October 2024 (UTC)Reply

Mongolia

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Latest comment: 6 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Mongolia is also a part of the Sinosphere, yet not represented in the main map. Should we amend this? 203.46.132.214 (talk) 03:45, 5 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

Clearly not, if you actually read the article. Remsense ‥ 论 04:00, 5 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
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