Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lan Fu

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 no consensus‎. Editors are encouraged to create an article on the scandal itself and redirect this there, however. asilvering (talk) 17:45, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lan Fu (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Negative undersourced BLP. Most of the article text is a WP:COATRACK for negative undersourced BLP material about someone else. I prodded this but my prod was removed by User:A. B. who provided as evidence for notability a newspaper article stating in vague terms legal charges against the subject and another newspaper article with a very brief mention that he was sentenced, neither used as footnotes for anything. I don't think these provide WP:SIGCOV. His position as deputy mayor does not pass WP:NPOL and the conviction does not have the evidence of lasting interest needed for WP:PERP. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:17, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Politicians, Crime, and China. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 19:35, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: In response to David’s comments:

• I added 3, not 2, refs including a NY Times front page article
• News and newspaper searches turned up more out there.
• The South China Morning Post article is exclusively about Lan Fu’s troubles
• When searching for refs, add Xiamen mayor to filter out other people with that name.
• This was my edit summary when removing the PROD:” remove PROD. Notable but the tagged concern remains: this may be more about the _alleged_ kidnapping of his son, Lan Meng, by Chinese authorities in Australia as a hostage for Lan Fu's return. We don't have a Lan Meng article”
• This article is likely not a BLP since all the refs said LAN Fu was sentenced to death 2 decades ago as I noted in another edit summary. (There’s no lingering on Chinese death rows).
• WP:NPOL: Xiamen has over 5 million inhabitants; it’s larger than every North American city except NY and larger than any city in the EU.
• Re not adding footnotes to go with the refs: I’d already spent 60+ minutes doing the WP:BEFORE and I was late for lunch
  • I tagged the article with an inline template and moved on.

I encourage others to look at the existing refs and what else is out there. —A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 20:34, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if it's best to cover this as a biography article, but the scandal itself and his involvement is covered in several books [1] [2] [3] for just a few, there are many more. He was a very major player in this scandal and he was a public figure that was convicted so at the very least his name should redirect somewhere. Xiamen is a city of 5 million so there's also probably coverage of him as a mayor in Chinese. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:47, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per my comments above as well as PARAKANYAA‘s. —A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 22:09, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect: or merge to an article about the corruption scandal. The NY Times article is about a bigger scandal, Fu is mentioned briefly, archive here [4]. The SCMP source is probably better [5] (archived copy), but they both deal more with the scandal than about the individual. I suppose Fu could be notable, but there is a decent amount of sourcing about the corruption trial/event (even the books cited a few comments above mention more about the event than about this person, who is only mentioned). Oaktree b (talk) 02:26, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Oaktree b Well, you say redirect, but we don't have any article to redirect to. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:19, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  There's likely sourcing in Mandarin, the scandals were probably the only thing dramatic enough to make it to Anglophone printing. PARAKANYAA (talk) 03:20, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  We'd have to create the article I suppose. We have at least enough for a stub. Oaktree b (talk) 03:40, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I suggest we keep this until we have a stub to merge it with. —A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 04:22, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:25, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment/Keep. The article has his name in traditional characters, not simplified. This is hardly noticeable to humans but impacts whether you find anything via ctrl+F searching. The simplified version is 蓝甫. I am looking for solid sources, but my gut feeling is that this guy is likely notable as deputy mayor of Xiamen and for being involved in a corruption scandal that garnered national interest. Here is a 2023 piece describing the scandal in great detail [6] – I'm not sure how reliable the source is though.

One could argue that the subject was only one person involved in a scandal (the "Yunhua smuggling case") that got hundreds of people arrested and sentenced, but he is named by sources as having received one of the harshest sentences of all defendants [7], so presumably he played an outsized role in the scandal. This would also be the counterargument to BLP1E. Toadspike [Talk] 13:26, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find a lot of sourcing on this guy, probably because the corruption case was in the very early days of the Chinese internet, but this [8] might constitute sigcov. He is also mentioned twice in this [9] scholarly review of the case – again, showing that his role was more significant than that of the hundreds of other defendants. Toadspike [Talk] 13:32, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, asilvering (talk) 11:45, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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.