Talk:Cross-strait relations

Requested move 14 June 2024 (about capitalization)

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: pages moved, absent any strong opposition. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 16:46, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

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• Cross-Strait relations → Cross-strait relations
• History of Cross-Strait relations → History of cross-strait relations
• Cross-Strait charter → Cross-strait charter
• 2004 Taiwanese cross-Strait relations referendum → 2004 Taiwanese cross-strait relations referendum
• Cross-Strait propaganda → Cross-strait propaganda
• Cross-Strait high-level talks → Cross-strait high-level talks

– MOS:CAPS and MOS:HYPHENCAPS. The words "strait" and "cross" are not proper nouns and should not be capitalized. Google Ngrams show that the term "cross-straight relations" is not consistently capitalized in sources. Previous discussion indicate that vague shortened names should not be capitalized merely to indicate significance – see MOS:SIGNIFCAPS and the fairly recent discussions at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 227#Capitalization of "the Strait", "the Bay", etc. and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 13#Use of capitals in a shortened title. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:36, 14 June 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 06:26, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

• Support per overwhelming lowercase usage stats. Dicklyon (talk) 00:58, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
• Comment these should all use "cross-Taiwan Strait relations"/etc. The way it looks now, it should be about the relations between Singapore and Malaysia. Or England and France. Or Alaska/Siberia. Or Denmark-Norway -- 64.229.90.32 (talk) 04:37, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  That sounds logical. But sources don't much agree. Do you have reason to believe that "cross-strait" is commonly used in relation to some of those other straits? Seems unlikely. Dicklyon (talk) 05:05, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  They need the context of the article/book that the term in used in. If there is no context (such as the title used in a general encyclopedia, and not a Taiwan-topics encyclopedia), there is ambiguity. In the context of the Strait of Malacca: "Deep Waters, Close Quarters: Malaysia and Singapore’s Cross-Strait Disputes", The Diplomat (2018); The Cross-Strait Traffic in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore: An Impediment to Safe Navigation? -- 64.229.90.32 (talk) 21:55, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

• Neutral My instinct was to strongly oppose this, but it seems The Economist, NYT, and Reuters (mostly) lowercase "strait". On the other hand, I must point out that the two Ngrams links provided above are far from conclusive – in 1997 they show the lowercase "strait" far above any other option, but the most recent numbers are quite close together. I guess I support this, but I don't like the way the Ngrams evidence has been presented above. I certainly oppose any move to add disambiguators lile "Taiwan Strait" as unnecessary; "cross-strait relations" is a longstanding phrase and the common name of this topic. Toadspike [Talk] 11:30, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  I also think MOS:SIGNIFCAPS doesn't apply here. Strait wasn't capitalized for emphasis, it was capitalized because it was seen as a proper noun. However, the other discussions cited are relevant, as is MOS:GEOUNITS. Toadspike [Talk] 11:36, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

  What's "seen as a proper name" should be guided by MOS:CAPS, which says Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. Dicklyon (talk) 15:48, 19 June 2024 (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.

Reclaim land from Russia

There is an interesting article from The Guardian but it's also mentioned by other sources. I think it's worth to mention in article. Eurohunter (talk) 11:24, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

• Helen Davidson (2 September 2024). "If China wants Taiwan it should also reclaim land from Russia, says president". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 September 2022.

There's another decisive difference between Taiwan and the Russian Far East though, to be fair, so the analogy doesn't really work, and comes across as rather whataboutist: the Russian Far East isn't inhabited by ethnic Chinese, nor even Chinese-speakers. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:12, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Thinking of which, the Russian Far East also doesn't call itself anything China, and there are further major differences like the Russian Far East being part of a different country with a completely different relationship to the PRC compared to the ROC ... it's a pretty poor attempt at a zinger, I must say. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:19, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

(Yes, the PRC desires to reclaim other regions too, such as Arunachal Pradesh / Southern Tibet, but not with the same intensity as Taiwan, and with roughly the same level of intensity as the Russian Far East – these other regions are clearly not that important to the PRC, which is plausibly related to the vastly different history compared to PRC / ROC. None of these other regions are even close to being ethnically or culturally Chinese. So the PRC is not particularly inconsistent here.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:40, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Reversion of non-neutral reorg

@AussieSurplus1510 can you please explain why you restored headers that seem rather non-neutral? I attempted to put your intermediate (non-controversial) edit back so this doesn't seem necessary to preserve that edit. Generally per WP:BRD if an inclusion is disputed on a policy ground such as WP:NPOV we should discuss at article talk rather than reverting again. Simonm223 (talk) 16:44, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I just add more information about US and Japanese hypothetical involvement in Taiwanese Defence which i thought , anyway, I will remove it right now AussieSurplus1510 (talk) 16:47, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. Simonm223 (talk) 16:57, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Suggest splitting military section to Chinese invasion of Taiwan

Currently, Chinese invasion of Taiwan redirects to Chinese unification#Official stance of the People's Republic of China, I suggested it should be deleted or retargeted here.

But best would be to create a dedicated article, I wrote a bit in User:Hanyangprofessor2/sandbox2 before noticing there's more content here. It should be moved to a dedicated article, and just summarized here. _{Piotrus at Hanyang| reply here} 06:47, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

I recommend re-directing it here.

Military tensions might be worth their own article, but I do not recommend giving it a speculative title like "Chinese invasion of Taiwan". I foresee an article like that developing around a specific POV. In the Chinese context, it reminds of me our "Debt-trap diplomacy" article -- an article dedicated to a hypothesized risk that is not borne out for years and may never be.

On balance, I think it is better to deal with the situation and the discourses on this issue in other pages like the reunification page or here in the broader context of cross-strait relations. JArthur1984 (talk) 11:20, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

I think it's absurd to propose a new article about an event that categorically has not happened. WP:CRYSTAL is a thing. I've also suggested at the redirect for discussion that the redirect also be deleted as it's referring to an event that has not happened. We are not the alternate history wiki. Simonm223 (talk) 11:22, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Aha. How about you try to delete World War III or Hypothetical Axis victory in World War II or Hypothetical partition of Belgium or such? Plenty of hypothetical or fictional scenarios are notable. Not all are on Wikipedia, but should be. Even ones like SFE: Invasion of Canada :P _{Piotrus at Hanyang| reply here} 15:38, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

I'm neutral on whether to split but I'm concerned that "Chinese invasion of Taiwan" would be a confusing title for an article about speculations or predictions. Better would be Potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan or something more general such as Cross-strait military tensions. Jruderman (talk) 23:22, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Maybe Cross-strait military activities? --Minoa (talk) 17:51, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

If it's cross-strait military activities it's not going to be much more than a list of all the times the United States got mad that China flew a jet over Fujian and newspapers acted like that was news. I think "tensions" is more workable here because it's a broader scope while still focusing on things that have actually happened in the real world rather than in the unfortunate fantasies of David Wingrove. Simonm223 (talk) 17:55, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

I had the thought that a potential article would include notable efforts to reduce tensions, and I also acknowledge the difficulty of predicting future geopolitical changes (there are lots of variables), hence my article title idea. --Minoa (talk) 19:22, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

It's not one jet, it's more like several hundred... There's plenty of coverage of Mainland Chinese military drills / exercises in the area, like 2022 Chinese military exercises around Taiwan .and 2023 Chinese military exercises around Taiwan. And 2024 Chinese military exercises around Taiwan which has a redirect. 2025 Chinese military exercises around Taiwan surely will have a blue link, and I wonder about the previous years.

I also noticed a dissonance in the category name vs the article here: Category:Cross-strait conflict vs cross-strait relations. One should be renamed to match the other. Relations is probably better, so I suggest a CfD for the category. _{Piotrus at Hanyang| reply here} 01:38, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

Of interest: Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2025_May_31#Chinese_invasion_of_Taiwan was closed, with this term redirecting here and some commentary about how this could be split off (also referencing this very discussion here). _{Piotrus at Hanyang| reply here} 03:09, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

• Support splitting Ahammed Saad (talk) 13:47, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

well the chinese wikipedia has a article about this: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E5%A4%A7%E9%99%B8%E5%85%A5%E4%BE%B5%E8%87%BA%E7%81%A3 109.81.29.16 (talk) 16:43, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

I also support the split of articles. I think it would be good to translate Chinese Wikipedia. ProgramT (talk) 07:14, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

Would that translation also include maintaining the WP:OR and the absent citations whose tags litter that obviously low-quality article? Simonm223 (talk) 11:32, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

This article and its sections can still cover everything without creating a potential fork. Also it would technically be a PRC invasion since Chinese already occupies Taiwan. Vacosea (talk) 16:26, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

• Strongly Support splitting out into Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Honestly, in the past, I would've been hesitant to create a page of that nature, but we already have World War III and Prelude to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (it used to be called "2021 Ukraine Crisis" before Putin invaded Ukraine the next year), both of which cover (or did) major hypothetical wars with a good deal of discourse out there. The same can be said for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan - in fact, given the amount of literature out there on the subject, I'm a little surprised that such an article hasn't been made yet. When If China invades Taiwan, the article can simply be converted into another prelude or background article, just like what was done for the Ukraine Crisis article. This subject badly needs documentation, and a content fork would go a long way towards addressing that need. And a split would be necessary for proper documentation, since 1) the Cross-Strait relations article barely has anything on a potential future Chinese invasion (neither does the Chinese Civil War article, for that matter), and 2) Trying to cram everything into the Cross-Strait relations article is just going to make it way too bloated. Making a new article is clearly our best course of action. LightandDark2000 🌀 (talk) 05:02, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

• Strong oppose the article title Chinese invasion of Taiwan, support a split with the title Potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, per Potential enlargement of the European Union, Potential re-accession of the United Kingdom to the European Union, Potential cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact, and anything else that has not and may never happen. Doeze (talk) 16:11, 15 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose, per WP:SPECULATION. The article Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis exists and already summarizes all recent military developments. I am currently opposed to having a Potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan article as well, but if anyone would like to explain what it would be about, I am open to reconsider it. Wasting time is still my passion (talk) 05:11, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Split proposal

I propose splitting Cross-strait conflict back into a separate article. This is distinct from the earlier split proposal about a proposed Chinese invasion of Taiwan and will incorporate military history going back to 1949.

The merge proposal that merged the conflict article into the relations article was discussed in 2021, before the outbreak of the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis. There has been a significant increase in military activity since then. At the same time, while relations have weakened, they are still nowhere near hostile. Cross-strait activites and interactions, especially with trade, continue to occur. I write this as 2026 Xi–Cheng meeting is scheduled to occur soon. In other words, I argue that China and Taiwan have ongoing relations and an ongoing conflict between them, and both deserve separate articles.

Also, North Korea-South Korea relations and Korean conflict exist. I recently made a merge proposal and recieved unanimous opposition, so the case can be made for two articles here as well.

The list of topics I want to cover for the Cross-strait conflict article are found in the campaignbox I made on the right. For mobile users, go to Template:Campaignbox Cross-strait conflict. Since relations between China and Taiwan were hostile until the late 1970s, I would likely truncate the topics in the History section from 1949-1979 and move the bulk to the conflict article. Wasting time is still my passion (talk) 05:00, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose too much risk of a split leading to WP:COATRACK issues. Also means twice as many articles to monitor for WP:CRYSTAL problems. We simply don't need more than one article for this at this time. Simonm223 (talk) 10:20, 10 April 2026 (UTC)