Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gu Changsheng


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. -- Cirt (talk) 06:28, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Gu Changsheng

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Unsourced BLP on a Chinese historian. Has lots of claims of notability, however the only thing I seem to be able to find is that he recently wrote a book entitled "Awaken Memoirs of a Chinese Historian ". Amazon has the following author's (self-)description:
 * "Gu Chang-Sheng is The People Republic of China's pre-eminent historian of Christianity in China, respected both in the East and the West for his objectivity and intellectual rigor. He researched the history of Christianity in China for the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. During the Cultural Revolution, he spent three years in an isolation camp and seven years as a forced laborer in a factory. From 1976 to 1989, he taught history at Shanghai East China Normal University. Professor Gu was a Visiting Scholar at Yale University's History Department in 1985 and at Yale Divinity School in 1986. In 1989, the U.S. Congress invited him to attend the Presidential Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. Professor Gu remained in the U.S. after the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre so that he could speak out for intellectual freedom and human rights. He has published more than 100 newspaper and magazine articles in the U.S., Canada, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Gu Chang-sheng is the author of nine books in Chinese, including Missionaries and Modern China. His most recent article, On Being a Historian for 50 Years, was published in China in July 2007; it was immediately banned and recalled by the Beijing government in August 2007. "

I find it a bit strange that there seems to be nothing else out there on him despite all these claims of notability and there seem to be no independent third party sources talking about him. Quite likely I'm just not apt enough to find things on Google, so if anyone can source these many claims I'm happy to keep the article. Travelbird (talk) 08:21, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:21, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:22, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Logan Talk Contributions 00:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep - He has a self-published memoir through Authorhouse which is if course completely useless for establishing notability. But it may be an aid to further research in finding reliable sources.  This book indicates that Missionaries and Modern China by Gu Changsheng is a "standard Chinese text".  This snippet indicates that there was some sort of broadcast review of the book but the snippet view isn't sufficient to identify exactly what the BBC monitoring service was listing.  This book lists the the work as a resource.  Note that the transliteration of the author's name is Ku Ch'ang-sheng.  Clearly more work needs to be done on this article but these sources indicates that Gu is notable. -- Whpq (talk) 20:42, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. I think that if we can get some editors who read Chinese to weigh in here we should be able to establish notability. I just spent a minute or two looking and found a couple of books that have a good number of library holdings listed in Worldcat and to have plenty of citations listed in Google Scholar. Taking into account that neither Worldcat nor Google Scholar has particicularly good coverage of Chinese works this would seem to indicate notability, but, not being able to read Chinese, I can't be certain. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:58, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Keep I haven't found any one thing which clearly shows notability, but per Whpq and Phil Bridger, looking around there is enough to suggest his importance in his area of research - he is well cited, his books are widely available, and comments such as Uhalley's point to having made an impact in his field. I'd also prefer someone with more expertise in the area to chime in, and hopefully someone will, but at this point I'd go with keep based on citations and how he is generally cited. - Bilby (talk) 04:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.