‘IMPORTANT PARTNER’: The bipartisan group told the CEOs of two US airlines that the government stood with them in the face of Chinese pressure over their Web sites
Taipei Times
Date: May 20, 2018
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter
In an effort to strike back against China’s growing pressure on global companies to toe
US Senator Marco Rubio arrives for a US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters
Beijing’s “one China” line, a bipartisan group of eight US senators on Friday wrote to two US airlines that have received such threats, pledging their willingness to defend the companies’ integrity.
The senators’ letters were sent to the CEOs of American Airlines and United Airlines, following a similar letter by US Representative Ted Yoho on Thursday last week.
The Chinese Civil Aviation Administration late last month demanded that the two airlines, along with several other international carriers, list Taiwan as “Taiwan, China” or “the Taiwan Region, China” — a demand that the White House has called “Orwellian nonsense.”
“The Chinese government and [the Chinese] Communist Party are aggressively seeking to marginalize and isolate Taiwan, a democracy and important partner to the US in the Indo-Pacific region, by bullying American companies and foreign countries to sever official ties with Taiwan,” said the group led by US senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez, cochair of the Senate Taiwan Caucus. [FULL STORY]
