Australia’s Qantas has changed its Web site classification of Taiwan and Hong Kong from separate countries to Chinese territories after Chinese regulators scolded several foreign firms over similar listings.
The airline yesterday said that it was amending an “oversight,” following in the footsteps of several other international corporations that were in the past week called out by Chinese authorities.
“Due to an oversight, some Chinese territories were incorrectly listed as ‘countries’ on parts of our Web site,” a Qantas spokesperson said. “We are correcting this error.”
To comply, Qantas has deleted several lists that categorized destinations by country.
However, according to the news.com.au Web site, Qantas has been accused by some Australians on social media of giving into Chinese “bullying” by making changes to its Web site and marketing materials so Taiwan is no longer listed as a separate country.
One user said Qantas was “bowing to China’s bullying and petulance,” while another said China had as much right to Taiwan as Mexico did to Texas.
Reuters cited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday as saying that it had contacted relevant companies to comply with the government’s strict position on the issue and to reject China’s difficult and unilateral requests.
“We are closely watching the following developments,” ministry spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) said.
“Of course, with the fact that Taiwan is a sovereign, independent country, there won’t be any change to this as a result of China’s unilateral way of handling things,” Reuters quoted Lee as saying.
China has stepped up efforts to police how foreign businesses refer to parts of China or territories claimed by Beijing, even if only in pull-down menus on Web sites.
Shanghai’s cyberspace authority last week sent a stern message to international firms when it ordered Marriott International to shut down its Chinese Web site for a week and amend what it termed the “illegal” categorization of regions Beijing claims under its authority.
Spanish clothing giant Zara, Delta Air Lines and Medtronic — a medical device company — were also called out for listing Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong as separate countries and urged to “immediately alter their illegal content and publish apologies.”
They have since apologized and changed their Web sites.
In a separate rebuke, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said in an online statement that Tibet and Taiwan were listed as countries on Delta Air Line’s official Web site.
The airline issued a public apology and amended its classification of the regions.
Additional reporting by Reuters and staff writer
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS