In recent years two debates took place in the study of Chinese phonology. One is on the nature of Qieyun(切韵): whether it
is compound or it reflects the actual phonetics, the other is how to reconstruct
the archaic phonology and whether to use the non -Chinese corpus. It seemingly looks that to deny the rhyme books, Qieyun and so on, which reflects the actual phonetics is to negate "the school of B. Karlgren", but in fact it means the total repudiation of Chinese traditional phonology. Whether to use non-Chinese corpus or not when we reconstruct the archaic phonology, it is up to the era of the phonetic system studied, and purpose and nature of the study. It is natural to use non-Chinese corpus for the sake of
reconstructing proto-Sino-Tibetan, however, it is difficult to use it for reading classics and reconstructing the phonetic system of Shijing(诗经) with abundant documents. Confusing the nature and purpose of the study to negate all scholars from Qian Jia (乾嘉)(except Duan Yu - cai 段玉裁) up to "the school of Zhang Huang(章黄) and Wang Li(王力) and so forth surprises everybody. It is unsuitable to proclaim oneself "main trend" and exclude outsiders. Why not distinguish the nature and purpose of the study and research objectively and separately to a-void meaningless censure?