The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said it had expressed concern to the search engine Google over its naming of disputed islands in the East China Sea in its map service, which omits their Taiwanese name.
Taiwan, China and Japan all claim sovereignty over the islets. The map, however, only labeled them the Diaoyu Islands (釣魚群島), in simplified Chinese characters as they are called in China, and Senkaku Islands (尖閣諸島), in Japanese kanji characters, as they are called in Japan.
MOFA spokesman James Chang (章計平) said the ministry had asked Google to label the area as Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台列嶼), in traditional Chinese characters, which is what the islands are called in Taiwan.
According to Chang, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco on Thursday expressed the government’s concern over the matter to Google’s headquarters, in that city. Google had yet to reply to MOFA’s request as of press time yesterday, Chang added.
Saying that Taiwan’s sovereignty over the Diaoyutais is an “undisputed fact,” Chang said Diaoyutai Islands should also be labeled on the Google Map.
Earlier last month, a collision between two Japanese patrol boats and a Chinese fishing vessel in the waters off the Diaoyutai Islands put the issue in the spotlight.
Google reportedly rejected requests from the Japanese Government on Thursday that the Senkaku Islands not be labeled as the Diaoyu Islands and that the description of the area as a territory of China be removed.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift