Talk:Sick man of Asia

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Looking up the 2008 academic book cited - which appears to be the main justification for this page's notability - the book's author does *not* assert that the phrase "The Sick Man of Asia" has been widely used to refer to China. Rather, David Scott the author is using the phrase rather to make a comparison *himself*. There is only one other source for the phrase in the book, a 2004 use by another author Callahan (again, Callahan is using the phrase themselves not suggesting it is in widespread usage). Zhanli2012 (talk) 18:10, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

quickly turned this phrase into a "universal epithet for all Chinese."

I traced the citation into the author's previous article^[1], and the source^[2]. It doesn't appear to support her conclusion. If anything, it seems to be a counter-arguement. This could be compared with zh:東亞病夫#普及-- Koverpw (talk) 08:11, 20 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]