This recalls the recent discussion about ellipsis in toponyms. Keys like place=* and border_type=* are essential but not necessarily a replacement for detail in names. In some cases, mappers have gone too far trying to structure names for machine readability. Another parallel discussion is the one about whether the name=* of a chain hotel location can ever include the brand=*. In both instances, data consumers still need a reliable mechanism to reconstruct the fully qualified name, but real-world variation may make a structured representation inadequate or unusable for this purpose.
What sets Chinese and some related languages apart is that generics in these languages are more predictable and the grammar is utterly simple without any inflection. But exonyms are more complicated. 肯德基州 is one of the names for the U.S. state of Kentucky in Chinese. 州 is a common generic in Chinese, but not every U.S. state is a 州, and not every 州 is an administrative area. Also, 肯德基州 without the generic most commonly refers to a fried chicken restaurant chain. A data consumer shouldn’t be expected to know all this just to support 肯德基州 in user input.
I was referring to data consumers, not mappers. Many popular renderers and geocoders have long used Wikidata’s labels as a fallback for when OSM lacks a name in a given language either intentionally or unintentionally. These localized names may be exonyms for famous places or they may be mere transliterations for less famous places. But either way it’s good enough for the data consumer to meet user expectations.