Lending her voice to those of Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) legislators, who are up in arms over the Google Maps service's reference to Taiwan as "a province of China," Vice President Annette Lu (
"On behalf of Taiwan, I strongly protest against it and I hope they can correct the mistake as soon as possible. I'm speaking on behalf of the government and the people and they owe us an apology," Lu said, making the remarks in an interview with the Voice of America radio broadcast service.
Lu said she is at a loss as to how Google could make such an error.
"Intentionally or unintentional, it's a terrible mistake, and it's a pity for such a famous company [as to] why they made such a ridiculous mistake," she said.
A Google Inc international affairs spokesman told the Central News Agency (CNA) on Thursday that Google has since begun looking into the matter. Google contends that its maps rely on international naming conventions.
The spokesman, however, denied accusations that Google would go to any lengths to get into China's online market, including describing Taiwan in a way that would not draw the ire of Beijing, saying that it is impossible for Google to use misleading information on its Maps services.
He added that the Google Maps' Taiwan section is purely aimed at providing users with data such as business locations and driving directions and that the Taiwan map has nothing to do with China.
Taiwan's complaint is not the first that Google Maps has received. Last year, South Koreans protested Google's use of the name "Sea of Japan" to describe the sea between Japan and South Korea, instead of the name "East China Sea."
Following the protests, Google decided to use both names on its maps in a bid to calm protests.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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