Talk:Heterodox teachings (Chinese law)

Taiwan is not China

Taiwan is not part of China- it's a separate, sovereign state recognized by the United Nations. Organizations labeled "cult" by the government of Taiwan do not belong on this list.Mavigogun (talk) 21:59, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

You are wrong, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758. Take Proposed second Scottish independence referendum as an example, if I am allowed to say " The Scottish people are fed-up with the Brexit bull-shit. The Scots would rather stay in the European Union than to accept the Brexit deal which is negotiated by Teresa May. Scotland is already a separate, sovereign state recognized by the United Nations", then I am going to be challenged. People will ask "Where are the supporting reliable sources? It must be in the news." If there is a second referendum, and the Scots vote "Yes", then the political climate/situation certainly can point to that direction. But if it has not happened, I would be jumping the gun. Tony85poon (talk) 02:36, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Those are great references- thanks much. While not recognized as a mater of politics by the UN, Taiwan is very much a distinct, sovereign nation. While Taiwan, AKA, The Republic of China, lays claim to the mainland nation of China, that country, AKA, The People's Republic of China, lays claim to Taiwan. While their political dispute is ongoing, so is the circumstance of separate and sovereign nations. To ascribe that dispute resolved to the favor of one party or the other would be both partisan and counter factual.Mavigogun (talk) 15:25, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Splitting proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Move to Heterodox teachings (Chinese law) and refocus. The content of the article (Chinese lists of cults) that actually lists Chinese NRMs is not notable outside of what would be directly discussed in List of new religious movements and/or in the context of an article about the PRC's NRM-related policy. As such, this article is going to be shifted away from being a list and toward being a direct discussion of 邪教, "heterodox teachings" (if a more appropriate translation is found, we can discuss that later). Moving this article is the best way to do this at this time.

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I propose that the content of this article be split into two different articles: People's Republic of China list of cults (we would move the present article and its edit history to this page) and List of Chinese new religious movements.

The reason for this proposed split and re-name is seeming lack of clarity on the purpose of this article. Looking at the edit history, the original focus of this article was apparently to discuss and share a list of cults produced by governmental organization(s), not merely reproduce any list of cults that happens to be Chinese in origin (see Governmental lists of cults and sects#China and wikisource links [1] at the bottom of the page -- the article intended to discuss this official designation). It was also previously briefly moved to People's Republic of China list of cults by User:Lembit Staan in 2019 in order to copy over some information from Governmental lists of cults and sects (see these diffs: [2] [3] [4]). To give an example of what this article could/should be, its purpose was originally similar to the article State Sponsors of Terrorism (U.S. list). Put another way, there is a reason that this article is not List of Chinese cults, and we should edit the article to re-clarify that original purpose.

The purpose of the split as opposed to a simple move and edit is to provide a space for an actual list of Chinese new religious movements, which the article as it stands now appears to be interested in providing. It should be List of Chinese new religious movements because "cult" is a POV term, and ought to only be included in the title of a Wikipedia article if it is discussing a discernible point of view in an NPOV way -- consensus on the topic of cults is that it is generally inappropriate for Wikipedia to designate any group a "cult" out of hand.

This would also resolve what appears to be long-standing issues about what ought to be included on this page and improve the page's quality. Discussions over the inclusion or exclusion of Taiwanese organizations has popped up from time to time and the source of a few previous back-and-forths between editors. These organizations would be correctly listed on List of Chinese new religious movements as discussion of Taiwanese culture is generally considered acceptable in articles about Chinese culture generally. As far as I know, the Republic of China does not maintain a similar official list of cults to the PRC's list -- if it does, discussion of that list would probably be most appropriate to be included on Governmental lists of cults and sects as it would likely be limited, with the potential to split it out into Republic of China list of cults if necessary at a later date. - - mathmitch7 ^{(talk/contribs)} 13:32, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

I concur, it is my understanding that this page is about religious organisations that are explicitly prohibited at some level in China, and that would be presented by some level of Chinese government as a cult (Xie Jiao). I think a longer discussion about the meaning of the Chinese phrase translated here as cult, including its Hanzi, literal meaning, and the implications of more colloquial translations i.e. cult and evil religion. I agree that new religious movements of Chinese origin are something completely different, and that we should avoid the world cult for NPOV reasons. The suggested name seems fine.

Clearly there are movements such as Falun Gong would appear on both pages.

What about renaming the current page Heterodox Teachings (Chinese Law) or something like this? And disambiguating from the current page?

Lucaswilkins (talk) 01:54, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

@Lucaswilkins:Heterodox Teachings (Chinese law) makes sense, though as per Freedom of religion in China and other articles it would also have to clearly distinguish the legal status of 邪教 in the ROC and PRC (though again, my understanding is that the ROC has no such designation and therefore that can be easily clarified in the lead).

I think I actually prefer this suggestion to the split, both because it's relatively easier and because no other country has a Wikipedia article about their specific new religious movements. List of new religious movements probably covers the topic well enough, and if it makes sense to split out an article about Chinese NRMs, probably makes more sense to do from there than from here. When writing this proposal, I think it was originally similar; just a simple move, no split. Plus, changing the name away from using the word "list" and toward using the legal concept would make the article stronger and less susceptible to shifting back to this state over time. - - mathmitch7 ^{(talk/contribs)} 12:00, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Actually, I think the capitalization would be Heterodox teachings (Chinese law) as standard format for WP articles about Chinese legal concepts seems to be to translate them in lowercase. See eg People's democratic dictatorship, Socialism with Chinese characteristics, etc. - - mathmitch7 ^{(talk/contribs)} 12:06, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

@Mathmitch7: Yeah, List of new religious movements seems like the right place for everything that would be on a list of Chinese NRMs. Furthermore, I think its more structured format will help with some of the quality issues on the current page. Yes, it should teachings not Teachings. All this sounds good and worthwhile to me, and you seem to have a sensible vision of how to do it. Let me know if I can assist Lucaswilkins (talk) 22:25, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Improvements

So as per the discussion with Lucaswilkins above, I have moved the article to Heterodox teachings (Chinese law) and have totally restructured the article per that move. This did involve removing most of the article as it existed before, though only some information has been lost (and that information was mostly the names of NRMs that I had not seen on PRC lists). You can see the old revision here in case rescuing some of that information is of interest in the future.

I also was able to add some readings in the "Further reading" and "External links" sections of the article, and I hope that those references are useful in improving the article in the future. Feel free to add more reliable sources, especially if they are about the article's general topic and not a specific NRM. Also feel free to add other sections about the use of the term before or after 2000. I am now going to go back through the "what links here" to change how this article is referenced, as the purpose has changed somewhat. Cheers - - mathmitch7 ^{(talk/contribs)} 16:18, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

That's a big improvement, well done Mathmitch7 Lucaswilkins (talk) 23:24, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

remove scrare quotes around "dangerous"

This use of scare-quotes in this section can be construed as dismissive and therefore serve as a form of editorialization. --Badpagenoticer (talk) 21:39, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

• They're not scare quotes, it's just a direct quotation. I'll edit the section title to be clearer and avoid the appearance of a POV. - - mathmitch7 ^{(talk/contribs)} 20:22, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Jerusalem Post, Falun Gong and Persecution Complexes

I'm a bit alarmed to note that the principle source of the claim that this law was principally enacted to target the Falun Gong seems to come from a Jerusalem Post article that, in turn, is sole-sourced to faluninfo. I removed the JP citation because, no, we should not be using such a source to center Falun Gong within the context of a broader Chinese law. FLG is just one of 22 groups identified by the law and we need better sources, by far, than that to say, in wiki voice, that it was enacted to go after them. Simonm223 (talk) 18:30, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I should also note that the characterization of FLG as "A qigong organization" is humorously out of date considering the political activities of The Epoch Times and the general recognition that FLG is a New religious movement with a syncretic blend of Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, UFO worship and personality worship centered on Li Hongzhi. They also do qigong. Simonm223 (talk) 18:32, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@Thomas MengI see rather than engaging at talk you just went and reverted. Please reply to this message regarding the Jerusalem Post being used to launder faluninfo. Simonm223 (talk) 21:34, 1 May 2024 (UTC)