Talk:Chinese Empire

Shortened footnotes with missing targets

This new article uses shortened footnote references extensively, and quite a number of the target sources are missing. @HiddenFace101 – I suspect that you may have copied quite a bit of the article from elsewhere on Wikipedia. If so (a) please make sure that you have made the proper copyright attribution following the instructions at Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia – I don't see anything in the article history edit summaries – then (b) please install this script, which will highlight the footnotes with missing sources, and add them to the bibliography from the source articles. Thank-you, and thank-you for writing the article! Wham2001 (talk) 11:42, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

PS if you don't want to install the script, you can also follow the instructions here for another way to make the errors visible. However the script provides more informative and accurate messages. Wham2001 (talk) 11:44, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

@Wham2001: I think I've fixed all the Category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors. DuncanHill (talk) 12:45, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank-you @DuncanHill – you are a star, as always Wham2001 (talk) 15:09, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Erroneous title and framing

The lead, infobox, and presentation of the content in this article implies that there was a continuous polity named the "Chinese Empire" or "Empire of China". It's widely accepted by scholars that the dynasties of unified China from the Great Qin afterwards form a connect part of Chinese history known as Imperial China, but I've never heard a scholar use the term "Chinese Empire" as a proper noun for a polity rather than as a descriptor. Similarly, 中華帝國 has never been used by any emperor or empress of China for their domain; it's used in a purely descriptive sense. What I mean by this is, for example, especially in older texts, you might see the Qing dynasty described interchangeably as the "Chinese empire" – that is, an empire in China – but not in reference to some continuous empire called the "Chinese Empire" since the time of Qin Shi Huang.

There was no dynastic empire named the "Chinese Empire" or "中華帝國", although there was the failed attempt by Yuan Shikai. This article should be renamed "History of Imperial China" or something similar, and the misleading infobox should be removed alongside references to an empire named the "Chinese Empire" or "Empire of China". Yue🌙 00:10, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Or perhaps treat the term "Chinese Empire" as a concept (similar to Celestial Empire) rather than a concrete continuous empire since the time of Qin Shi Huang? While Qing emperors of China did use terms like the Latin term "Imperii Sinici" (meaning "Chinese Empire") in official documents such as the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk for their domain (in addition to being described by others as so), it was not truly a continuous empire for China from the Qin dynasty to the Qing dynasty, but rather a generic term referring to the domain ruled by the Emperor of China. --Wengier (talk) 00:57, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Rather amusing infobox. The content also overlaps with so many other articles. Vacosea (talk) 21:06, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Agreed that this article should be named "History of Imperial China" or something similar. "Chinese Empire" is cartoonishly simplistic and flattens out a lot of varied dynastic history. - Amigao (talk) 23:51, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I think the redirect to History of China#Imperial China should be restored. This is a WP:CFORK of existing articles, under an awkward name. Walsh90210 (talk) 00:38, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I think the article should be refocused. This particular article should be about the term "Chinese Empire" itself, such as the name origin and the usage etc (similar to Celestial Empire). Not about the actual history of Imperial China. After all, the term "Chinese Empire" is commonly used (even more so than Celestial Empire) and can indeed be made an article with its particular focus. --Wengier (talk) 00:45, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure how much "article" there needs to be here, but a Disambiguation page does seem better than a redirect. I'll see what people come up with. Walsh90210 (talk) 00:57, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

There are a lot can be written about the term "Chinese Empire" (referring to the imperial domain ruled by Emperor of China), and the term is used by many reliable sources as an alternative name for (imperial) China (similar to Cathay, Huaxia, Celestial Empire, etc). Since it can indeed have real relevant contents (see the new "Name" section for example), I think a complete refocusing of the article would be a good solution. --Wengier (talk) 01:02, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Improvements needed with "Continuous or separate empire(s)" section

There is a thriving historiographical debate between the traditional 'dynastic-succession' model of a unitary, continuous Chinese empire, and the more academic scholarly consensus (see Peter Perdue, James Millward, Pamela Kyle Crossley) that these 'dynasties' are better understood as discontiguous, overlapping empires/kingdoms/states. I see no evidence of engaging with these basic issues in this section.

I recommend adding the following articles:

- Hodong Kim's Was 'Da Yuan' a Chinese Dynasty? https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/123/article/652955/pdf

- James Millward's broader critique of the 'dynastic model' https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/how-chinese-dynasties-periodization-works-with-the-tribute-system-and-sinicization-to-erase-diversity-and-euphemize-colonialism-in-historiography-of-china/8673E04413865EE65B2C192FC8F90341

- Peter Perdue's China Marches West (book)

- Wang Yuanchong: Remaking the Chinese empire

these last two show that the Ming-Qing transition wasn't just a dynastic switch of a continuous Chinese empire, but in fact two politically, geographically and culturally distinct polities waging war over what we call 'China', with the Qing winning. Arguably they are two empires vying for hegemon in East Asia, rather than a political continuation of Qing from Ming.

I am happy to help with the sourcing and wording, but I am less versed in the wikipedia editing side, so I probably need help with source formatting (not with the academic formatting of course, I'm familiar with that, its just the tech side of things). TheStranger123 (talk) 23:16, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Please note that the said section currently states the following:

"While the term "Chinese Empire" may be used to specifically mean the Ming or the Qing dynasties during the existence of these dynasties, it was often used in a sense to refer to a continuous empire ruled by various dynasties in Chinese history"

"On the other hand, modern scholars usually consider the imperial dynasties separate states or empires rather than a single continuous empire, especially since the end of Imperial China..."

So from the existing content of the section it should be already clear that modern scholars generally do not consider them a continuous Chinese empire, but rather as separate states or empires in the land of China as we know (unlike the usages during the Ming and Qing periods). So the content is basically in line with what you suggested. But of course it can be further expanded to cover more of such issues, such as the Yuan case mentioned above. But indeed such issues are certainly not limited to non-Han dynasties; for example, the term Sui-Tang transition, along with similar ones like Ming-Qing transition and "Tang-Song transition" etc, were introduced during the second half of the 20th century in order to highlight the changes or discontinuities from such transitions, in contrast to the earlier tradition of seeing such consecutive dynasties as natural chronological units. I have expanded the section accordingly to cover these. There are more to say, but meanwhile, I think other critique of the 'dynastic model' should probably be covered in e.g. the Dynasties of China or Dynastic cycle article instead of here, since this article is mostly about the term "Chinese Empire" itself rather than as a critique of the 'dynastic model', although I should mention that Dynasties of ancient Egypt etc probably also have similar issues, since they were in fact also states rather than a continuous polity. --Wengier (talk) 02:59, 30 July 2024 (UTC)