Described as new to science by Zheng et al. (2000), but this treatment has not been adopted by the BirdLife Taxonomic Working Group. Dickinson (2003) treats this taxon as a species inquirenda, with the comment: "It was proposed as a species but critical acoustic information is missing, and the description might apply to a subadult form of elisae. Listing it as a subspecies would be misleading." The BirdLife Taxonomic Working Group concurs with this judgement and therefore does not recognise this taxon.