Talk:Republic of China (1912–1949)

The article is confusing the lead sentence seem to imply ROC has ceased to exist

The current first line of lead is that: "The Republic of China (ROC) or simply China was a sovereign state based in mainland China from 1912 to 1949 prior to its move to Taiwan." This could be read to imply that the ROC ceased to exist after its move to Taiwan.

I understand the intent after reading through the edit histories. It seems the use of "was" is because the ROC currently being a sovereign state is contentious due to both ROC and PRC claiming to be the legitimate government of China. Hence, I propose the fix:

"The Republic of China (ROC) or simply China was a sovereign state based in mainland China from 1912 to 1949 prior to its move to Taiwan which it currently controls."

I suspect there will be some contention around saying ROC controls Taiwan, but I believe it's quite fair to say ROC governs Taiwan. ROC may claim to be the legitimate government of mainland China, but as of right now, it is clearly currently administered by the PRC. Similarly, the PRC may claim to be the legitimate government of Taiwan but as of right now, it is clearly administered by Taiwan.

I welcome alternate ways to fix this. I just believe that the current lead sentence fails to clearly communicate the current existence of the ROC. Mathchem.21 (talk) 05:25, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

In my mind it's not really even an issue of rightful sovereignty or who governs Taiwan (seems to be the ROC to me)—it's pretty clear there's an intact legal continuity between the ROC in 1930 and in 1960. The issue is that: how do you talk about a prior stage of an existing sovereign state in a way that makes it clear that while there was continuity, the state is very different now? It's not quite the same, but I think immediately of Papal states, which also speaks in the past tense, despite there being a legal throughline between it and the present Vatican. Remsense聊 15:10, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

True. Good analogy. Alexysun (talk) 19:03, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Culture section?

All other nation pages I've seen have a section for the culture of a nation. I certainly think the republic of China had in many eays a culture distinct for the PRC and imperial China. The shanghai music scene and early evolution of the qipao immediately come to mind for me, and I'm not even well educated on the subject. 2A02:AA1:1049:D53C:22ED:8627:7F7D:C25D (talk) 12:15, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

To be plain: this article is egregiously overweighted on political and military history. There's much more to say in literally every other dimension, but we simply haven't done so. Remsense ‥ 论 12:35, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Such is the way of such articles on en.wiki. In addition to additions, it may be worth seeing how much of this article should be a briefer summary of History of the Republic of China. CMD (talk) 13:31, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Someone interested in focusing on this issue could adapt material from the history section of various cultural pages -- for example, I know there is plenty of Cinema of China material during the ROC era, including material I added using academic sources. That might be the quickest way to help give some balance. JArthur1984 (talk) 23:28, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Here's some sources:

• Zhang, Yingjin (2015). A Companion to Modern Chinese Literature. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-45162-5.
• Denton, Kirk A. (2016). The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-17008-6.
• Lufkin, Felicity (2019). Folk Art and Modern Culture in Republican China. Lanham, MD: Lexington. ISBN 978-1-4985-2630-2.
• Merkel-Hess, Kate (2016). The Rural Modern. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-38330-9.
• Kaske, Elisabeth (2008). The Politics of Language in Chinese Education. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-16367-6.
• Zhang, Qing (2023). China’s Intelligentsia in the Late 19th to Early 20th Centuries. Boston: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-066110-1.

Recent changes regarding the historical definition of the ROC on mainland with present-day Taiwan

The recent contentions regarding the relation between the ROC on mainland and present-day Taiwan have made the article unstable. As one side still regard the ROC as an existing state that based in Taiwan, against people who consider the pre-1949 ROC as a historical state that was ceased on mainland and already succeeded by the communist government in Beijing. Personally I oppose the action to delete the ROC’s retreat to Taiwan, which was trimmed only for the reason of reducing article length. It’s oversimplified the historical discourses between two different views. Sheherherhers (talk) 07:11, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

This is not quite right, and it may be because you focused on the first sentence without reading the whole first paragraph clearly enough. The ROC’s retreat to Taiwan is already in the first paragraph, a couple of sentences later. So it hasn’t been “deleted”. But it’s needlessly repetitive to add retreat to Taiwan in the first sentence as well. We just need retreat to Taiwan in ONE of these places only. It’s poor writing to re-introduce the same concept only a pair of sentences apart. JArthur1984 (talk) 14:30, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Those two views don't appear to be in opposition. If one "side" is arguing the ROC exists in Taiwan and the other "side" is arguing it has ceased on the mainland, those sides agree. At any rate, I don't see why the article should be reinforcing either "side". If this section refers to this edit, I agree with JArthur1984 that there is no need to mention the retreat/relocation to Taiwan twice in three sentences, and don't see how the repetition or removal affects either of the narratives you mentioned. CMD (talk) 14:41, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

There was no dispute about its sovereignty and the first sentence still sounded like the ROC ceased to exist, so I made a few changes. Vacosea (talk) 08:30, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Why was the Significance of the name section as well as Sun's quote removed?

That entire section was removed by @JArthur1984: with no justification. I get that it was an unsourced translation, but at the very least some references to the widely reported original quote should've been kept.

This article on a government website

Results on Google Books Mazamadao (talk) 12:22, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

You've confused yourself by not correctly comparing different versions of the page. You're comparing a 2022 edit to the latest version of the page following my most recent edit. As the diff you provided states, "(570 intermediate revisions by more than 100 users not shown)". Whatever you're talking about is not from my most recent edit (which added a wikilink in the culture section), but somewhere in the 570 intervening edits by more than 100 users.

Please read more carefully before you criticize others. JArthur1984 (talk) 15:08, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

My apologies to JArthur for accusing them of something they had nothing to do with. Clearly I had an oversight with my expedient navigation through the history page. I've found the "culprit", User:Finell, and they did provide their justification, and a reference link is still there.Mazamadao (talk) 15:56, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, it's quite all right. JArthur1984 (talk) 16:42, 9 September 2024 (UTC)