Wikipedia talk:WikiProject China

I proposed the creation of {{Infobox Chinese/auto}} and {{Chinese/auto}}, which are based on both {{Infobox Korean/auto}} and {{Korean/auto}}. It was for the first time when Grapesurgeon created two automatic transliterations on English Wikipedia. Absolutiva 03:20, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

I don't see a proposal anywhere. The Korean templates perform romanizations of the Hangul alphabet. Is your plan to generate Wade-Giles, Bopomofo and Gwoyeu Romatzyh from pinyin? Kanguole 08:56, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

How would this work? Chinese characters are not phonetic. Toadspike [Talk] 13:26, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

Since its creation of {{Ko-translit}} that can automatically transliterate McCune-Reischauer and Revised Romanization. I suggest that {{Pinyin}}, can also automatically transliterate Wade–Giles, Postal romanization, Yale system, Jyutping and Hanyu Pinyin. Absolutiva 23:42, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

Does anyone help with function for italic from Module:Pinyin for {{Pinyin}}, based on Module:Ko-translit. Absolutiva 23:55, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

Postal romanization is not systematic enough to be automatically derived. Jyutping and Cantonese Yale are for Cantonese, and cannot be derived from pinyin. Deriving Wade–Giles, Bopomofo and Gwoyeu Romatzyh from pinyin is certainly possible, but it's not clear that running that code all the time is a good idea. Maybe a subst'ed template would be sufficient, if needed. Kanguole 23:57, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

@Absolutiva, I'm sorry, I still don't think you understand the difference between Hangul, which is an alphabet that represents sounds, and Chinese characters, which are logographs that represent meanings. I also don't think you understand the function of the Pinyin module, which converts from "lazy" Pinyin (ni2hao3) to Pinyin with proper diacritics (níhǎo). That's not transliteration or romanization, that's just find-and-replace. It's infinitely simpler than what Ko-translit does. Toadspike [Talk] 16:10, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Apologies, I may have misunderstood your point. You want an editor to input Pinyin, which the module would convert to other romanization formats? That makes more sense, but as Kanguole pointed out it would really only work between three romanization systems, one of which (Gwoyeu Romatzyh) is completely obsolete and the other of which (Wade–Giles) is on its way out. If someone wants to put in the effort to code a module that turns Pinyin into Wade–Giles and vice-versa, I wouldn't stop them, but it seems like a waste of time. This would also only be useful for TM:Infobox Chinese, not TM:Pinyin – we shouldn't really have more than one romanization inline (in article text). Toadspike [Talk] 16:24, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Indeed what would really be valuable is automation to convert characters to pinyin (with a way to specify when characters have multiple readings). There is tech for this at Wiktionary; I don't know if we have any similar things here at English Wikipedia. On Wiktionary you can write {{zh-l|中國}} to get '中國／中国 (Zhōngguó)'. (Observe that the same template also has automation for traditional/simplified conversion. Again, with a way to specify when it's not 1-to-1.) See wikt:Template:zh-x or wikt:Template:zh-l or wikt:Module:zh. Internally, there's a big, centralized lookup table, as you might expect.

In my estimation, the greatest hurdle isn't "can it work" or "is it a good idea" but the implementation. The implementation takes someone with the effort and time and skill in hooking up templates and modules, a software system which is rather arcane for most editors. Once done, though, it would be easier to use and easier to maintain than the manually entered transliterations spread across tens of thousands of articles. Adumbrativus (talk) 04:22, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

I think "can it work" and "is it a good idea" are hurdles. I didn't even have to open that table to see a critical flaw: it only produces one reading for homographs (多音字) like 长, which is only listed as "cháng" and not "zhǎng". That table also only contains eleven thousand entries, which is lots, but probably not sufficient for Wikipedia, where we often deal with archaic characters. Further, Chinese characters are used by a huge variety of languages and dialects, such that Mandarin pronunciation is often completely irrelevant. I don't want to create a mindless tool that causes editors to think they can simply plug and chug without verifying the output.

The Hangul tool is far more accurate than the average Wikipedian. In addition to the fact that Hangul is phonetic and Chinese characters are not, this is due firstly to the extraordinary efforts of those who built it and secondly to the arcane and complicated rules of Korean romanization. I cannot see a Pinyin tool (aside from, perhaps, an LLM) reaching similar levels of accuracy and I expect such a tool to cause more harm than good. Toadspike [Talk] 16:05, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Like I said, Wiktionary's templates already provide a way to specify the reading. For instance, {{zh-x|长{zhǎng}长了|grew long}} produces '长长了 ― zhǎngchángle ― grew long'. And, though Pinyin is a sensible default as it is by far the most-used, common case here on Wikipedia, the template documentation shows there are options to specify other transcriptions, e.g. Jyutping for Cantonese. Of course, nothing absolves editors of due diligence like checking the preview of rendered output and understanding the content of their own edits.

You originally asked, "how would this work?". I had the same skepticism in my mind too, and looking into this helped broaden my perspective. What I found was news to me, and I think it'll be news to some other editors reading this too. Of course if one were to begin with the premise that Hangul romanization is the benchmark and nothing short of that level of phoneticness is acceptable, then there would be no question left in their mind in the first place. Otherwise, the good news I can share is, there is a project which shows how to do it. Adumbrativus (talk) 20:20, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, this is very reassuring. I withdraw my opposition on technical grounds. I remain concerned that editors will not be careful enough when using such a tool, but as long as it's possible to generate a correct output in all cases, that becomes a behavioral issue and not a technical one, which means we can deal with it on a case-by-case basis. Toadspike [Talk] 20:26, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

I still think it's wasteful to run this code repeatedly, when it always gives the same result. And if it doesn't give the same result, because someone has updated the table to change which of the alternative readings is assigned to some character, that will silently change what could be many pages to an incorrect form. It wouldn't be enough to check the output when the template was first added.

But to take a step back, what problem would this template solve? It couldn't be safely used by people who don't know what the pinyin should be, because they need to check that the output is correct and whether they need to manually supply the correction. And if it does have a use, is that not served at least as well by a subst'ed template (which would avoid the issues above). Kanguole 00:01, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps all this talk about customizations is distracting from the common case, which is that most characters have only one reading, and even among characters with multiple readings, most of them have one reading which is much more common than the others. So for instance, let's say you're writing an article about Xi'an Museum, which is 西安博物院. If you're an editor who doesn't know the characters, then you'll have to fret about it just as much as you do today. But if you're an editor familiar with these characters, then to you it'll be obvious that they're pronounced the familiar way and not with some alternative reading. An auto-conversion template saves the trouble of inputting the pinyin and tones manually.

If the value of this sounds like a convenience we can live without, rather than a burning problem – yeah. A great many templates are merely conveniences, and yet they are valuable.

For the performance concern about running code repeatedly, I'm not sure if that concern comes from technical expertise (which I'd love to hear more about – I'm no expert) or from technical naivety (e.g. not knowing about caching, or ignoring Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance and prematurely optimizing). As for table updates, they are rarely needed; and, among the rare updates, even fewer are "primary reading swaps" rather than additions or unambiguous error corrections. In any case I wouldn't mind a subst template which would be useful too. Lastly, I'm sorry to Absolutiva for side-tracking their topic which was really about something different. Adumbrativus (talk) 10:26, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

OK, the use case is an editor who knows both the characters and their SC pronunciations, to save them from typing the pinyin. Would that not also be achieved by subst'ing the template? That would also produce a result that is easier to maintain.

The performance concern is not based on measurement but general principles. I am not proposing an optimization, just objecting to adding useless repetitive work. Kanguole 11:54, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

On your example: If you don't know what the characters mean, you shouldn't be using this hypothetical automatic romanization template. (This is also true for the automatic Hangul template.) For the Xi'an Museum, you'd have to know that Xī'ān is capitalized and needs an apostrophe, and that Bówùguǎn is a separate word and also needs to be capitalized. So, the hypothetical "editor who doesn't know the characters" should consult a dictionary or, better, another editor who does know the characters, regardless of whether we have an automated tool. Toadspike [Talk] 12:24, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

but just because a tool does not do everything is not reason to not have it. Stoplights do not prevent all people from running reds but they mostly do. This would be useful in the vast majority of cases for modern chinese language. Czarking0 (talk) 00:34, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Well, in fact, in most cases showing the romanization of a Chinese term is not really necessary.

• Those who know Chinese can pronounce a Chinese term correctly even without any romanization.
• Those who don't know Chinese do not necessarily need to know how a Chinese term is pronounced (and won't be able to pronounce it correctly anyway).

Using 西安博物院 as an example:

• Those who know Chinese can pronounce this correctly as "Xī'ān Bówùyuàn" even without any romanization.
• Those who don't know Chinese do not necessarily need to know how this is pronounced (and even when they see the romanization "Xī'ān Bówùyuàn", they won't be able to pronounce this correctly anyway).

Wikipedia is not a website for teaching or learning Chinese – it does not have to show how a Chinese term is pronounced. ~2026-37809-5 (talk) 06:53, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't agree with your arguments. First off, there is no Chinese speaker who can "correctly" pronounce every single one of the 100,000+ Chinese characters in existence, insofar as there even is a "correct" pronunciation for archaic and obsolete characters. Sure, the vast majority can read "西安博物院", but most would struggle to get through this list without making a few mistakes. Second, it is absolutely imperative that an English-speaker can read foreign-language terms appearing on the English Wikipedia in some way, even if their pronunciation is poor. (Not to mention that most Chinese speakers don't have impeccable Standard Chinese pronunciation either.) This is so important that it is required by our manual of style. Third, there are many folks at intermediate levels of Chinese fluency who benefit greatly from romanization, even of simple terms. While teaching Chinese is not our primary goal, if we can help readers learn new languages while following good encyclopedic practices, there is no reason to avoid doing so. Toadspike [Talk] 14:59, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

1. In fact, showing pronunciation (whether accurate or approximate) itself is not really important to begin with. Wikipedia is written, not pronounced. When reading a written language with eyes, you don't really need to know how the text is pronounced.
2. What I wrote is about the romanization that is shown right next to Chinese hanzi text (like the "Xī'ān Bówùyuàn" in the Xi'an Museum article). It is not about English-language use (article titles, running text, etc.).
3. Since teaching Chinese is not Wikipedia's primary goal, editors do not need to put extra effort on showing romanizations. Readers who want to improve their levels of Chinese fluency should use something else.

~2026-38881-5 (talk) 01:52, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

You are welcome to raise this issue at a wider venue, like the Village Pump. We cannot form consensus to change encyclopedia-wide practice here. But I assure you that would be a waste of your time. Toadspike [Talk] 09:54, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm not saying that showing romanization should be prohibited altogether; I'm just saying that it should be done sparingly (such as in contexts where pronunciation in the original language does matter – e.g. when explaining a pun based on the pronunciation(s) of Chinese terms). ~2026-42255-4 (talk) 09:39, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Why isn't there an article? Do better Wikipedia ~2026-35271-3 (talk) 20:29, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-35271-3 The pose would need to meet our general notability guideline, which generally requires significant coverage in three reliable sources. A cursory web search turned up zero reliable sources. Unless you can find some, this pose is not suitable for an article at the moment. Toadspike [Talk] 21:36, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

I've started a requested move at Talk:National Office for the Fight Against Pornography and Illegal Publications#Requested move 19 January 2026, which could use the help of someone with some Chinese language competency to provide an assessment of whether there is a less cheeky translation of the name. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 20:18, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Please add reliable sources. Bearian (talk) 11:13, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

This article’s sentences use inconsistent British and American spellings. It’s already being nominated over at wp:AFIN#Pig butchering scam. See here for more information. 2600 etc (talk) 17:01, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Li Xi (politician)#Requested move 24 January 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vestrian24Bio 10:09, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Please be advised that The Bund was moved without discussion to The Bund (Shanghai). I have reverted the move for now, given that the article has been considered the primary topic for over a decade, but should there be disagreement over its status please discuss on the talk page.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 17:54, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

The article 2006 Astro Wah Lai Toi Drama Awards has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Tagged as Unreferenced for 2 years. No other language has a reliably sourced article from which to translate. I conducted several researches online in English, and found no reliable sources.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion based on established criteria.

If the proposed deletion has already been carried out, you may request undeletion of the article at any time. Bearian (talk) 11:10, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:King Zhou of Shang#Requested move 4 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Toadspike [Talk] 11:50, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I have nominated Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Dreameditsbrooklyn (talk) 10:45, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Template:Welcome-foreign/Chinese

Hello. Can you help verify a brief, English-to-Chinese translation in a welcome template?

Template:Welcome-foreign is a bilingual welcome template used to welcome new users who have written content in some other language besides English. The template welcomes them first in English, then in their own language, as long as it is one of the three dozen languages it can handle. New languages are easily added. I have added support for Chinese, but I don't know Chinese so I used automatic translation to create Template:Welcome-foreign/Chinese from the original at Template:Welcome-foreign/English. I'd appreciate it if a native Chinese speaker could verify or improve the translation. Feel free to edit it directly, or paste a better translation below, if you prefer not to edit a template. Thanks! Mathglot (talk) 01:31, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Great Wall Pao#Requested move 3 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vestrian24Bio 13:10, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Beiyang government#Requested move 12 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Red Shogun412 (talk • contribs) 23:29, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

2010 Asian Games has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 18:22, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

This article has been unsourced since its creation in 2005. If someone could please help add references I would appreciate it. Thanks.4meter4 (talk) 01:53, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

More could be done, but it's no longer unsourced. Jstor has a few mentions, but the real meat would be in broader reviews (aka textbooks) of Chinese and Japanese poetry. Toadspike [Talk] 14:51, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Somehow, after 20 years, this stub still has only two citations, or more than 1 per 100 medals that PRC won. Add reliable sources. Bearian (talk) 05:34, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

An editor has requested that Jintao (disambiguation) be moved to Jintao (name), which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 04:21, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Wing Sun Fong#Requested move 7 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vestrian24Bio 09:24, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Republic of China calendar#Requested move 10 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 05:01, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Jintao (disambiguation)#Requested move 11 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 10:16, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

@TarnishedPath Thanks, but we were already notified three sections above this one :) Toadspike [Talk] 07:55, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

The article Imperial roof decoration has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Tagged as Refimprove for 18 years. Had a copyright violation that was removed. Essentially unreferenced for 21 years. No other language has a reliably sourced article from which to translate. Appears to be Original research. Lacks significant coverage.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion based on established criteria.

If the proposed deletion has already been carried out, you may request undeletion of the article at any time. Bearian (talk) 14:31, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Wing Sun Fong#Requested move 7 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 13:13, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

@TarnishedPath This is the second time in as many days that you've notified us of a discussion we've already been notified of.

Please be more careful. This needs to stop. Toadspike [Talk] 16:19, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

@Toadspike my apologies. TarnishedPath^talk 03:57, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:English personal pronouns#Requested move 2 March 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Abesca (talk) 03:54, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

For any interested watchers of this page, it has been added to that template. I have added it to about a dozen pages where I've been able to determine it is appropriate and I'm putting this here if anyone knows other pages where it should be added. There is a list in my sandbox of every article here where it is on the corresponding article in zh.wiki, although there are plenty of articles that have it there where it shouldn't be added here. Cheers. 1brianm7 (talk) 03:44, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Just notifying members of this project that there is a Conflict of Interest edit request relevant to this WikiProject at the Huagong Tech article. DrThneed (talk) 21:21, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Second Cold War § Term or series?, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. George Ho (talk) 07:51, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Hello, I am HorseBro the hemionus, but call me IsHorse or hemmy for short. I need help regarding of Draft:Dzungar conquest of Tibet, as I need more sources to further establish notability and verification and maybe copy-editing on the page. Thanks, IsHorse, the Khan of the Universe and Ungulates (Please don't click this) 10:58, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Should Wikipedia present China as a superpower since the 2020s or should we present an academic debate? See Talk:Superpower#China superpower status Moxy🍁 03:39, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

An editor has requested that Diana Pang (Chinese politician) be moved to another page, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. Whyiseverythingalreadyused (t · c · he/him) 02:34, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

The move discussion is actually at Talk:Diana Pang (Singaporean politician)#Requested move 13 March 2026. Toadspike [Talk] 09:58, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks; I forgot to correct this Whyiseverythingalreadyused (t · c · he/him) 10:43, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

(Toadspike, I saw your message on my talk page against my decision to conduct the RM at the Singaporean politician's talk page after already opening one at the Chinese politician's; I just saw this one earlier than that one) Whyiseverythingalreadyused (t · c · he/him) 13:55, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Can someone double check if this article really doesn't exist on zh wiki? A student of mine wants to translate it from en to zh, I was surprised but there is no interwiki and the zh characters lead to a different topic, seemingly _{Piotrus at Hanyang| reply here} 15:22, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

@Hanyangprofessor2 There's a section at zh:古风音乐#“中国风”, which is the closest thing I can find to proper coverage of the topic on zhwiki. It's not mentioned on the zh:中国音乐 page at all, but zh:周杰伦 has three unlinked mentions of the genre, and a search turned up a mention at zh:最炫民族风 (obviously) and the category zh:分类:中国风歌曲. Toadspike [Talk] 22:37, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I guess it's fine for a translation project then. Not as niche as 中國古典詩詞 that didn't exist until we translated it (and someone else recently got 中国诗歌). Some gaps are just weird. _{Piotrus at Hanyang| reply here} 12:52, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi all. The article I've been working on for Gu Yanwu is at Featured Article Candidates and is in need of a source review. There's not a ton of people with personal experience w/ Chinese history at FAC, but for such an important figure, it'd be really helpful able to read Chinese sources could ascertain completeness and breadth especially. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 15:44, 16 March 2026 (UTC)