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Wikipedia China

China and Taiwan Clash Over Wikipedia Edits (bbc.com) 84

Ask Google or Siri: "What is Taiwan?" "A state", they will answer, "in East Asia". But earlier in September, it would have been a "province in the People's Republic of China." From a report: For questions of fact, many search engines, digital assistants and phones all point to one place: Wikipedia. And Wikipedia had suddenly changed. The edit was reversed, but soon made again. And again. It became an editorial tug of war that - as far as the encyclopedia was concerned -- caused the state of Taiwan to constantly blink in and out of existence over the course of a single day. "This year is a very crazy year," sighed Jamie Lin, a board member of Wikimedia Taiwan. "A lot of Taiwanese Wikipedians have been attacked." Wikipedia is a movement as much as a website. Anyone can write or edit entries on Wikipedia, and in almost every country on Earth, communities of "Wikipedians" exist to protect and contribute to it. The largest collection of human knowledge ever amassed, available to everyone online for free, it is arguably the greatest achievement of the digital age. But in the eyes of Lin and her colleagues, it is now under attack.

The edit war over Taiwan was only one of a number that had broken out across Wikipedia's vast, multi-lingual expanse of entries. The Hong Kong protests page had seen 65 changes in the space of a day -- largely over questions of language. Were they protesters? Or rioters? The English entry for the Senkaku islands said they were "islands in East Asia," but earlier this year the Mandarin equivalent had been changed to add "China's inherent territory." The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests were changed in Mandarin to describe them as "the June 4th incident" to "quell the counter-revolutionary riots". On the English version, the Dalai Lama is a Tibetan refugee. In Mandarin, he is a Chinese exile. Angry differences of opinion happen all the time on Wikipedia. But to Ms Lin, this was different. "It's control by the [Chinese] Government" she continued. "That's very terrible." BBC Click's investigation has found almost 1,600 tendentious edits across 22 politically sensitive articles. We cannot verify who made each of these edits, why, or whether they reflect a more widespread practice. However, there are indications that they are not all necessarily organic, nor random. Both an official and academics from within China have begun to call for both their government and citizens to systematically correct what they argue are serious anti-Chinese biases endemic across Wikipedia.

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China and Taiwan Clash Over Wikipedia Edits

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  • by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @09:03AM (#59278394) Homepage

    Wikipedia editors should make sure pages stick with the facts, and lock them down if necessary.

    Something like "Taiwan is a disputed territory. China claims it is a province but is recognized as an independent country by 19 UN member nations."

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Taiwan isn't disputed. The mainland is!

      • by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @09:38AM (#59278538)

        Taiwan isn't disputed. The mainland is!

        Technically it is all disputed, and for a long time both countries claimed to be the legitimate government ruling over all China. In reality though, they are basically two separate countries in all practice now. China would love to conquer and occupy Taiwan (and no-doubt will one day), China is like the European powers in the 1700's laying claim to everything and trying to expand as much as possible.

        And of course, China, not content to just police and censor their own shut-off internet want to censor the world's internet too.

        • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          How about have the introduction mention the classification is disputed by many nations, and have a hyperlink to a table showing which nations recognize Taiwan as a country, as an independent province, as a territory of mainland China, etc.

          As far as Taiwan's claim to mainland China, they are the only ones who "recognize" that. It's a silly ego game between both sides.

          Taiwan is a de-facto country whether anybody wants them to be or not. Short of a very nasty* war, it will stay that way into the foreseeable f

      • Well both are. The PRC and the ROC both claim Taiwan.

    • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @09:55AM (#59278612)

      Sure, you can say "I observed something that I call the sun. I observed it to be what I call bright."

      But that won't work with things that are entirely made-up by humans. Like the concept of a country.
      You can use perfect logic, and still end up with different results, because it is based on definitions, which are arbitrary by ... definition. (You see the problem?)

      Hell, even for basic things like "Which event happened first?", measured scientifically, we know situations where different measurers get conflicting results!

      Yet the casual layman and even pretend-scientist with no background in the most fundamental physics, neurology and philosophy, will go on acting as if and believing there *must* be *one* version that is "fact".

      That is why Wikipedia's fallacy of absolutism is its downfall. It is defective by design. And deliberately so.

      In this case, all we can do is make an arbitrary definition that feels right to us, but not necessarily to anyone else. And we are not "more equal", so we can not claim being more right.
      E.g. "The only person who gets to decide what country he is part of, is the person itself."

      INB4 getting downvoted by people who simply can't accept it, believe I sided with their pet enemy (I didn't.), and don't have the background. ... I get ya, but *please* get a real education before getting an opinion.

      • by TuringTest ( 533084 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @10:34AM (#59278810) Journal

        That is why Wikipedia's fallacy of absolutism is its downfall. It is defective by design. And deliberately so

        If you read Wikipedia's policy on Neutral point of view, [wikipedia.org] you'll see it's the opposite of absolute facts. When there's a disagreement like this one, the editorial policy is to present to readers all relevant positions in a language as aseptic as possible.

        Something else is how well the policy is implemented for a particular article. That's open to debate, and anyone with a complaint can debate it at the article's collaborative Talk page.

    • I would love to agree with you, however politicians will disagree with "the facts" - China will say that it is not disputed that Taiwan is anything other than a province. You might point to people who dispute their view, they will simply say that this is "fake news" (or something) put about by a few dissidents who just want to cause problems.

      Sad to say but lying is a tool used commonly by politicians, diplomats, business leaders, ... They generally get away with it. Us techies will get into big trouble if w

      • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        I see now! They both claim something different, but they both agree that there is no dispute. Sorry, this level of illogic took a lot of mental work for me to wrap my head around it. This amount of cognitive dissonance is curiously painful.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Taiwan is the real China.
    • Something like "Taiwan is a disputed territory. China claims it is a province but is recognized as an independent country by 19 UN member nations."

      Even that simple, common sense approach to defining things is incredibly problematic.
      1) Merely acknowledging that there is a dispute is to acknowledge that there are two sides, which are fighting words as far as the mainland is concerned, since they hold that there is only one China.

      2) Taiwan considers itself the legitimate Chinese government in exile, so saying that "China" claims it as a province is to deny that the Taiwanese are "China".

      3) Recognition by UN member nations doesn't mean much. Recall that T

    • You would think that a neutral POV policy would have them do just that. In reality, they're taking sides and making political statements and not getting flagged as such.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Only the mainland is disputing Taiwan's status and that's because the CCP has not legitimacy. The last thing they want is nation of free Chinese lest their own locals decide maybe they'd like to be free of the CCP.

  • Fuck China (Score:1, Troll)

    by gatkinso ( 15975 )

    Seriously, fuck them.

  • Lock the page. Work out what it should be via the 3rd party adjudicator Update it and leave it locked for 12 months Ban ALL IP address that attempt to change it in the 12 months for 12 months. Repeat as needed.
  • by beepsky ( 6008348 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @09:22AM (#59278466)
    > to systematically correct what they argue are serious anti-Chinese biases endemic across Wikipedia.
    It's not a bias against China or the Chinese, it's just reality.
    People who aren't Chinese aren't subjected to constant brainwashing by the CCP, so they don't insist on ridiculous and provably false things like Taiwan being part of the PRC.
    There is no real debate on these issues outside of China / the Chinese expat community.
    • by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @09:45AM (#59278562)

      People who aren't Chinese aren't subjected to constant brainwashing by the CCP, so they don't insist on ridiculous and provably false things

      Well... we kind of are though, but to a lesser degree. Hollywood won't say anything offensive about China anymore because they're scared of losing sales in China. Corporations have to watch their twitter feed because if they say something that goes against the Chinese narrative they get cut off in China.

      Heck recently some owner of an American sports team made some comment about "protesters" in China and China didn't like the term protesters so now that sports team is barred from Chinese television.

      China is a big powerful market, and we're slowly becoming influenced by their censorship because corporations in the West are fearful of losing access to them. China's censorship BS is slowly becoming more influential on us.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Welcome to the club. Europe has had the same thing from the United States. TV shows censored to meet US standards, and their running time cut short to 45 minutes so American networks can show 15 minutes of adverts.

        It used to be a lot worse but now that cable TV in the US seems to be able to show pretty much anything it's less of an issue, at least on the censorship front. Run time is still affected, except if it's a partnership with Netflix.

        • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @11:19AM (#59279026) Journal

          same thing from the United States. TV shows censored to meet US standards

          It's not the same thing. Europe co's edited or altered TV content because they wanted to sell their shows to private US TV broadcasters, not because of pressure from the US gov't to control political messaging. (The US gov't may impose rules such as "no boobs", but that's to cater to US voter tastes, and had nothing to do with influencing Europe.)

          It's been that way for melania: If you wanted to sell in Rome, you had to market to Romans, not your local market. It's similar to why products are often designed for right-handers: there's often not enough market for left-handers to justify a custom factory run.

          But what's at issue is the Chinese gov't itself pressuring content producers to not bad-mouth the Chinese gov't. That's different than the market-size issue.

    • It went wrong when the world accepted the "One China" policy for dealing with the PRC and Taiwan: having only one of them accepted into the UN (worse; kicking out Taiwan in favor of the PRC), diplomatic relations with only one of PRC|Taiwan, etc.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Communist like their censorship and want to see it in use all around the internet.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

        Authoritarians like their censorship and want to see it in use all around the internet.

        FTFY

        • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          The C in CPC is.....
          its not "Authoritarians"...
          • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @10:53AM (#59278894)

            The C in CPC is.....

            its not "Authoritarians"...

            Censorship is not limited to, nor a basic requirement of, a communist government. It is, however, frequently used by authoritarian governments.

            The political spectrum is multi-axis. You are concerning yourself only with the Y-axis (right-left) while censorship is a function of the X-axis(authoritarian/libertarian). Censorship would be on "positive" (up) end of the axis while something like the 1st Amendment would be on the "negative" (down) end.

            This is partly why you keep getting those idiots who try to claim the NSDAP was socialist (left) when they are really comparing authoritarian (up) traits. The other part is that they're idiots.

            • Communism and authoritarian are not the same thing, that is true.
              Looking around at communist countries, we see they are all authoritarian. Why? Because authoritarian is a *prerequisite* for communism. You can't have a communist country without if being authoritarian.

              The definition of Communism is that "the people collectively", through their leaders (the politicians), decide what you can make, sell, and buy. Of course if there are more than about 24 people in the country, they aren't democratically votin

              • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

                Given the definition of a communist country - a country in which the government controls everything anyone can make, or any service they can perform to earn money - it's silly to suggest that communist doesn't have anything to do with government control.

                I didn't say that. I said censorship wasn't a prerequisite for or a guaranteed outcome of communism. It tends to happen because that's the only effective, non-murdery way of suppressing complaints that inevitably rise up due to the inherent inefficiency of communism.

                Really, as you allude to, communism doesn't scale. It's a great idea in small, like-minded groups but it quickly reaches a critical mass since pure communism at the state scale generally leads to mass poverty and a small wealthy government/pa

            • > This is partly why you keep getting those idiots who try to claim the NSDAP was socialist (left) when they are really comparing authoritarian (up) traits. The other part is that they're idiots.

              Well and because it was the National SOCIALIST WORKERS Party.

              Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although this was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders, and in the 1930s the party's main focus shifted to anti-Semitic an

              • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @01:50PM (#59279906)

                Well and because it was the National SOCIALIST WORKERS Party.

                Do you argue the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea is a democracy because "Democratic" is in the name?

                Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although this was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders, and in the 1930s the party's main focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.

                Initially they were also simply called the DAP. They added the "socialist" part to try to bring in more left wing supporters to broaden their base. But they were already anti-Marxist and often (physically) fought with the German communist party.

                • They weren't National Socialists JUST because they had it in their name. They were National Socialists because they were Nationalists that did Socialist things.

                  Some of the National Socialist's social economic policies:
                  Strong capital controls on banks
                  Legal limits on profit margins
                  Requiring companies to hire works as directed by the government
                  Preventing workers from being fired without government approval
                  Laws preventing transfer of wealth to outside of Germany
                  Requiring wages be linked to corporate revenue
                  Lar

          • And the D in USA stands for democracy. As much as the R is for republican. Just like they did in the GDR, the German Democratic Republic.

            Names are bullshit. Not words but actions matter.

  • by beepsky ( 6008348 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @09:31AM (#59278504)
    Letting Chinese ultranationalists edit wiki articles about Tienanmen Square or the Hong Kong riots is equivalent to letting Neonazis edit articles about the holocaust or Japanese ultranationalists edit articles about Nanjing.
    What I'm trying to say is if accuracy is the goal then that's probably not a great idea
  • The person living there!
    (And only about his own home too.)

    Everything else is dictatorship and a crime.

    It's like those who want to tell you what you can and cannot do to your OWN damn body.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Jinping agrees with you and declares that he is the ONE person whose say matters. Everyone else can be reeducated.

  • "Haven't you heard, it's a battle of words?" the poster-bearer cried.
    --Roger Waters, 1973

  • The Bleeding Obvious (Score:4, Informative)

    by tinkerton ( 199273 ) on Monday October 07, 2019 @10:31AM (#59278802)

    Both an official and academics from within China have begun to call for both their government and citizens to systematically correct what they argue are serious anti-Chinese biases endemic across Wikipedia.

    Of course. We in the west are the world experts in propaganda, by a mile, and we have a lot of experience in twisting wikipedia content in a very multilayered manner. The concept of reliable sources is important. Once you can control who is considered reliable then the whole system follows you.
      It is interesting to look at the Philip Cross case ( https://wikipedia.fivefilters.... [fivefilters.org] ), where a senior Wikipedia editor over a decade systematically tweaked the pages of antiwar voices and leftist voices to minimize their reliability ,and the other way round for the pro war voices. I say systematically though the changes were embedded in large amounts of 'neutral edits'.
    He's back at it btw, after a temporary ban.

    That is how Wikipedia gets our kind of bias while maintaining an aura of neutrality: our mainstream media are reliable and get space at wikipedia, theirs are not and they do not get space.
    So while the propaganda war on Hong Kong is generally very one sided, what is new is that China attempts to respond. They will soon bump into the many layers of defense.

  • If you ask Siri “what is Taiwan”, there’s a good chance the response will be “here’s what I found on the web regarding ‘what is Taiwan’”.

    • If you ask Siri “what is Taiwan”, there’s a good chance the response will be “here’s what I found on the web regarding ‘what is Taiwan’”.

      If I ask Alexa "what is Taiwan", it will probably give me the weather forecast for London.

    • My main takeaway from this is: don't ask Siri anything. That's the easy part!

      Second takeaway: Double-check whatever you read on Wikipedia.

  • In order to figure out the real truth, Wikipedia is reaching out via twitter to the general manager of the Houston Rockets....

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