Talk:Beiyang government

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Easter egg

This article is the target of easter egg links (a.k.a. "submarine" links) labelled as “Republic of China”, as e.g. in the list of belligerents at 1911 Revolution. Is that on purpose? ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 15:25, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

This was the government of the Republic of China for a period, so the link may be appropriate, but you would have to discuss it at the page the link appears at. CMD (talk) 16:09, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

From a purist view, you may be right. But that would be highly impractical: There are currently 18 redirects to this page, to several of which (such as Republic of China (1912-1927), Republic of China (1912-1928) (with variation of the hyphen) and possibly Government of the Chinese Republic and First Republic of China) this discussion applies. And then there are up to 6 pages linking to each of these. If you don't wanto to bundle this discussion here, do you know any more appropriate place? ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨

This may be worth raising at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject China. CMD (talk) 03:59, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Good suggestion, thanks! I'll do that probably in the next weeks. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 07:49, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

It's tough because the name is sort of an open historical question. "Beiyang government" is a useful way to indicated that your are specifically talking about the government which Yuan Shikai lead compared to "Republic of China." At the same time, the title is a slight perjorative meant to diminish the government's own legitimacy, despite it being recognized as the government of china for much of the period (sort of like the debate over the term "Byzantine Empire," come to think of it)

In the specific case, I think labeling it as the "Republic of China," and linking to the page, is valid since this is the page of the regime that took over from the Qing, which includes its alternate names. Plus the very least, at the start Yuan hadn't enacted the autocratic measures that also hurt his republican legitimacy in most historians' eyes yet. LincolnMagnus (talk) 19:56, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, LincolnMagnus, for your historically instructive answer. I only don't understand your "Plus": Shouldn't that be all the more reason to clean up the easter egg link in the example I mentioned in the OP? ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 13:37, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

yeah that part actually is superfluous to my overall point in retrospect LincolnMagnus (talk) 19:07, 27 June 2026 (UTC)