‘CENSORSHIP’: Beijing rejected a US Department of State request for consultations on its demand that foreign companies begin referring to Taiwan as a Chinese territory
Taipei Times
Date: Jun 29, 2018
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter, with Reuters, BEIJING and WASHINGTON
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday expressed the government’s gratitude for
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Andrew Lee speaks at a news conference in Taipei on Jan. 24. Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
efforts being made by like-minded nations to counter China’s bullying of private-sector corporations after Reuters quoted sources, including a US official, that said China had rejected US requests for talks over how US airlines and their Web sites refer to Taiwan.
“Over the past few months, Beijing has been pressuring foreign airlines to list Taiwan as Taiwan, China. This practice has reached an hysterical level,” ministry spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) said, adding that China’s repeated threats of “corporate censorship” has severely undermined affected parties’ freedom of speech and corporate freedom.
China has demanded that foreign firms, and airlines in particular, begin referring to Taiwan as a Chinese territory on their Web sites along with Hong Kong and Macau, a move described by the White House last month as “Orwellian nonsense.”
Numerous non-US carriers, such as Air Canada, Lufthansa and British Airways, have already made changes to their Web sites, but several US companies, including Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, were among carriers that sought extensions to a May 25 deadline to make the changes. [FULL STORY]
