Talk:China proper

RFD discussion: March–May 2016
This is a general use of "proper"; compare: Hence, delete IMO. - -sche (discuss) 20:44, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
 * 1834, Thomas Roscoe, The Tourist In France, page 196:
 * Lorraine aud Burgundy bore little part in the history of France proper.
 * 1870, William Hepworth Dixon, Free Russia: In Two Volumes, volume 1, page 33:
 * This seaport on the Dvina is the only port in Russia proper. Astrachan is a Tartar port; Odessa, an Italian port; Riga, a Livonian port; Helsingfors, a Finnish port. None of these outlets to the sea are in Russia proper.
 * 1901, Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer, Men and Cities of Italy, page 6:
 * Northern or Continental Italy which lay north of the Rubicon, differed radically from Italy proper.
 * 1919, William Warren Sweet, A History of Latin America, page 21:
 * The approximate area of Mexico and the Central American states is 1,000,000 square miles, while the area of the Spanish West Indies is nearly 100,000 square miles, leaving for South America proper an area of over 7,000,000 square miles.
 * 1965, Walter Ze'ev Laqueur, Russia and Germany, page 52:
 * The higher posts usually went to the Baltic Germans, while tutors, technicians and artisans were often newcomers from Germany proper.
 * 1988, Yoshikazu Sakamoto, Asia, Militarization & Regional Conflict, page 100:
 * Okinawa was placed under direct US military rule and after the occupation of Japan proper.


 * Delete proper def 3.3. DCDuring TALK 21:55, 15 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete precisely per nom. Nothing special about this particular combination. bd2412 T 00:42, 16 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep. Looking up China and proper does not tell you what historians mean when they say China proper - i.e. China to the exclusion of Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Northeast China and Inner Mongolia. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 01:06, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The definition doesn't say that your definition is what historians mean. It mentions examples of the places that might be excluded by one historian or another. If a historian either needs to specify what s/he means by China proper or doesn't have a specific definition in mind then the meaning meant is SoP. Only if a large share of hearers and readers all share the same set of exclusions and inclusions so that no explanation is needed would this merit inclusion IMO. DCDuring TALK 02:02, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Of course not. By that logic we should not have postmodernism or existentialism, or even Europe. We cannot help it if terms are controversial, but we should provide an aid to users who want to know what terms mean. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 02:05, 16 March 2016 (UTC)


 * If there is (as the usage notes say, and as the citations I see on Google Books confirm) no fixed list of territories which are included, then this is as unidiomatic as "Italy proper", "South America proper", and every other placename + proper: it refers to those regions of X which are considered central/integral to X (by whoever is using the term), and not to peripheral regions. This use of "proper" functions with all placenames (hundreds attestably so), and similar senses can be used with any other noun (often attestably):
 * 2004, Stress, the Brain and Depression, page 24:
 * Hence, this border is still blurred, raising the question whether traumatic life events induce sadness/distress – which is self-evident – or depression proper and, secondly, whether sadness/distress is a precursor or pacemaker of depression.
 * 2013, Jason Vanhee, Engines of the Broken World, page 171:
 * Now, it would be better if it was water proper, because water is cleansing, but there's enough good in snow, I suppose.
 * - -sche (discuss) 02:34, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The fact that proper can be used in other ways does not prove anything. China proper is a specialised term used in Chinese historiography. Unlike all the other "proper"s you mention, an entire Wikipedia article is dedicated to it. It is idiomatic. Anyone who comes across the term would want a definition, since it is not clear that "China proper" cannot refer to, for example, Manchuria, or Tibet. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 02:56, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Prove it. DCDuring TALK 12:43, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Read the Wikipedia page. This is a real term. We have Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia which are also contentious terms. I don't see how China proper is any different. If anything, it is even more vague than those. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 14:57, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * That's why I try to avoid capitalizing such terms.
 * We don't accept any attestation from wikiworld (except Wikisource?). If you can find three independent citations in any one context that clearly, but implicitly, demonstrate that the word is used to refer to a specific area without that area having been defined explicitly earlier in the document, then your case is proven. There may be other kinds of proof, eg, a specific official definition, which might be presumed to be followed in all associated official documents, many instances of the spelling China Proper or occurrences of "China proper" in quotes. DCDuring TALK 15:49, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. The sense given in proper is “In the strict sense; within the strict definition or core.” So, what is the China in the strict sense? if it is not a fixed phrase it should be interchangeable with Mainland China but it’s not the case ([//books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=China+proper%2CMainland+China&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3]). Saussure said “in language there are only differences without positive terms.” What is not China proper is Manchuria, Xinjiang and Tibet; what is not mainland China is Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Clearly it is more than just a combination. (You might delete it because it is “encyclopedic” but I think it’s useful enough.) — T AKASUGI Shinji (talk) 14:12, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Surely what constitutes "China proper" is a matter of opinion. The fact that we know what "proper" means in this context doesn't mean that we know what the phrase means to a reasonable certainty.  If most people would understand "China proper" to refer to only a particular set of possible areas, and assume that it doesn't refer to others, then the phrase would have a useful definition.  On the other hand, if, as seems to be the case, there are different ways to interpret the phrase, or the meaning isn't generally apparent, then it seems more like just ordinary use of the word "proper", in the same way that one might apply it to England, or the United States, or Greece; that is, somewhat vaguely, without the degree of specificity that such a definition might require.  For example, is "England proper" the Kingdom of England, including Wales, Man, and the channel islands; or does it exclude Wales and include the others; or does it exclude everything except the English mainland?  If a significant number of people might choose different definitions between these, and the phrase isn't given a legal definition, then it means whatever the speaker or writer intends it to mean; which if not specified, also allows it to mean whatever the hearer or reader thinks it might mean.  Why would "China proper" be any different?  P Aculeius (talk) 14:25, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It is not a matter of opinion: [//books.google.com/books?id=WThv9RCES9oC&pg=PA36&dq=%22called+China+proper%22&sa=X#v=onepage&q=%22called%20China%20proper%22&f=false], [//books.google.com/books?id=CbZfAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA59&dq=%22called+China+proper%22&sa=X#v=onepage&q=%22called%20China%20proper%22&f=false], [//books.google.com/books?id=P98aXmGsFxcC&pg=PA43&dq=%22called+China+proper%22&sa=X#v=onepage&q=%22called%20China%20proper%22&f=false], [//books.google.com/books?id=SCmgKaROm5gC&pg=PA93&dq=%22called+China+proper%22&sa=X#v=onepage&q=%22called%20China%20proper%22&f=false], [//books.google.com/books?id=iJtX2qrOl_wC&pg=PR13&dq=%22called+China+proper%22&sa=X#v=onepage&q=%22called%20China%20proper%22&f=false]. Why do you guys ignore specialists who actually use it? — T AKASUGI Shinji (talk) 15:20, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * In linguistic terms the 'proper' means the same thing in all of these cases, it just varies in the same way 'my house' will vary depending on who says it. My house has a garden, maybe yours has two, maybe it has none, the point is that this doesn't make my house an idiom. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:48, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * You missed the point. My five references define the term China proper for the same historical region by using the verb called, so it is a context-independent term used by specialists. My house is not. — T AKASUGI Shinji (talk) 23:14, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia categorical denies this and 5 Googl Book hits doesn't prove anything. Ar you saying that there are no other definitions of China proper? Then I say prove it. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:20, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Please give me just one example of China proper that explicitely includes Manchuria, Xinjiang or Tibet. This term is rather dated, though: [//books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=China+proper%2CChina+Proper&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3]. — T AKASUGI Shinji (talk) 10:26, 26 March 2016 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 16:23, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. The keepers seem to be biased by their own sense of what's properly China. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:37, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah-hem. Instead of attacking the users actually participating in the discussion, how about providing justification why you think it is not idiomatic, and how you suddenly seem to know what China proper is by simply looking up China and proper? ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 11:29, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Abstain for now: On one hand, the -sche quotations are quite convincing. OTOH, the actual spatial extension of "China proper" cannot be known from knowing "China" and "proper"--the only thing known is that "China proper" is some region of China smaller than the whole of China--but I feel this is a weak argument. The fact that it is not capitalized as "China Proper" is detrimental to keeping. Nonetheless, I am inclined to think that the users of this dictionary are better off our having the entry, even if it is borderline material. I don't really know. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:43, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I cannot for the life of me see how deleting China proper and Greater China makes our dictionary more useful for the average user who has no idea what these terms mean, and cannot know by simply looking up the individual words themselves. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 03:48, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete Ƿidsiþ 18:36, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. Without an entry, I'd have thought it was synonymous with mainland China, i.e. excluding only Taiwan. —CodeCat 18:52, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Well it probably is for some people. Ƿidsiþ 19:11, 13 May 2016 (UTC)