Eclecticology wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
To an American, however, the government is the whole shebang, the cabinet, the legislature (including the opposition party!), and especially the reams of bureaucracy that affect one's daily life. Just because there's been an election doesn't mean that the Department of Motor Vehicles has changed -- it's the same government.
I don't think that this is so much a US/UK distinction as it is an informed/popular distinction. The popular mind sees all these administrative and bureaucratic agencies as extensions of government; it does not easily distinguish them from legistative functions.
What would you call these instead? The "state"? That would be confusing in the US, since "State" names one particular level of our government.
I remember hearing in junior high that the US Constitution is good because Italy (say) has had dozens of governments since the end of WWII, while we've had the same stable government since 1787.
The Italian example is well known. In parlimentary contexts it is used as a straw man by opponents of electoral reform. "If your proposals for democratic reform went ahead we too could be unstable like Italy."
Yes, they certainly have had a lot of governments since the end of WWII, but not in the sense that the US has had the same government since 1787.
Anyway, the name "People's Republic of China" is not used by the country. It's used by the government -- this one, and previous ones back to Mao's. It's a political name that wouldn't exist without a government to attach it to.
We don't really differ here. It is used BY governments, and applied BY govenments as a the name OF or FOR the country. As different as Fidel Castro has been from his predecessors he has been quite content to let "Republic of Cuba" remain unchanged as the formal name for that country.
But even that term is a reference to a form of government. Had he adopted the title of "king" ("rey"), he'd have changed it.
If the Chinese abolished government, it would no longer apply to anything, yet the country of China would continue to exist. Nobody would *change* the name; the Chinese people would continue to call the country "China" (Mandarin "Zhong1guo2") then as now as before.
Now we need to consider the definition of "country". Was China in its various periods of warlordism "a" country during that time, or was it just a loose arrangement of little countries. Today's Afghanistan is a country in name only as long as the goverment in Kabul remains ineffective in extending its influence over rural warlords.
Here you seem to be using the term "country" to refer to a political entity. IME, it's a vaguer term that says more, and less, than that. Wales and Scotland are not the same country, but North and South Korea are. This is why it's meaningful to claim that Tibet and China are different countries -- and why this claim isn't quite the same as a call for Tibetan (political) independence.
We can perhaps avoid further debate by saying that the long form is the "official political name" for a country: a name imposed on the country (and officially so) by the dominant political entity there.
OK
This probably settles the matter for purposes of Wikipedia, however much we may argue about things in the above paragraphs. (Well, it would settle it if we were the only two people in Wikipedia.)
How about "China is a geographical territory in eastern Asia whose borders have varied over the millenia of its history"?
Except that "geographical territory", in this context, means "country" ^_^.
Compared to [[China]], dealing with [[Ireland]] is easy.
-- Toby