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Allegations of Chinese apartheid

Allegations of Chinese apartheid (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Perhaps the worst of a now-infamous and metastasizing series of original-research WP:POINT essays. It slaloms around clumsily between five unrelated issues – migrant workers, the Tibetan occupation, African and Taiwanese populations within China, religious minorities within China, and civil liberties more generally among the Chinese. Why this particular grab-bag of disparate topics? Because, using the latest in data-mining technology, a Wikipedian discovered that a certain class of verbal act – an “allegation of apartheid,” if you will, meaning a sentence with the word “apartheid” in it – could be find in one, two, sometimes three (and in one case six!) primary-source documents within each of the five topics above. There are no secondary sources at all; no one discussing these primary-source “allegations”; no sources even calling them “allegations,” in fact, since this particular species of verbal act was discovered, described, and classified by Wikipedians; no sources linking these diverse topics in this or any other way. Different writers writing about different things, with no thought to one another or to the hobby-horses of future Wikipedians, used the word “apartheid”; that is all.

Remember the old Far Side cartoon ? That's what we're dealing with. “What Various Sources Say about Various Unrelated Issues in China”/”What Users X and Y Hear” (blah blah blah APARTHEID blah blah blah APARTHEID blah blah blah APARTHEID).

Each block quote houses one iteration of the word “apartheid.” The blah-blah-blah portions between the block quotes consist of pure original research:

  1. "According to Anita Chan and Robert A. Senser, writing in Foreign Affairs, 'China's apartheid-like household registration system, introduced in the 1950s, still divides the population into two distinct groups, urban and rural'."
    The Foreign Affairs article in fact never mentions apartheid.
  2. "The analogies to South African apartheid go even further."
    Wikipedian's thesis.
  3. "A report by the Heritage Foundation discussed some of the reasons for the use of this term."
    No it doesn't. It just mentions some depressing facts about the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and later on uses the word apartheid.
  4. "Desmond Tutu has also drawn comparisons between the fight to end South African apartheid and the Tibetan struggle for independence from the People's Republic of China."
    Tutu told his host, the Dali Lama, that he and his people were on "the winning side."
  5. "These tensions have spilled over into the tourist industry."
    Wikipedian's thesis.

The article ends on a wonderfully ludicrous note. We are told that our own Jimbo Wales "compared China's restrictions on internet usage and free speech to South African apartheid." But here we are offered no block quote to go with our blah-blah, nor even given the rhetorical details of the comparison. Why? Because the AP reporter we've relied on for this gem didn't find it notable enough to report. So in the absence of our master's voice saying "apartheid, apartheid," we console ourselves with what appears to be Jimbo's driver's-licence photo.

Delete this dreck. G-Dett 01:29, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete, point-pushing original research surrounding a forced neologism. --Eyrian 01:32, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
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