The reverberations of China’s requests to 44 airlines that they change how they refer to Taiwan have continued to manifest themselves, as Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways on Monday submitted to China’s wish and changed their online listings for Taiwan to “Taiwan, China.”
However, there is still time for the 20 or more airlines that have caved to the unreasonable demand to reverse their actions before China’s July 25 ultimatum.
The “request” made last month by China’s Civil Aviation Administration comes with a postscript in the form of a statement, which says that the agency would “closely monitor” the airlines’ progress to “correct and improve” the way they list Taiwan on their Web sites.
The letter’s tone insinuates that there could be negative consequences if the airlines do not comply, making the “request” seem more like a threat.
However, there is little cause for panic. After all, what could China do if none of the airlines agree to carry out its whimsical wish? Will it embarrass itself by asking all Chinese to boycott the 44 airlines? This unlikely scenario would only make China lose face, which is the last thing Beijing wants.
Therefore, it is high time that the airlines call China’s bluff and say: “That’s it. We are not taking any more of this nonsense.”
Granted, China, with its 1.4 billion people, is a lucrative market whose business few airlines would want to lose, but if no one had paid any attention to China’s demand, everyone would have been able to retain full autonomy over their services and the pressure would have dissipated over time.
Meanwhile, the governments overseeing the 20 or more airlines that have acquiesced to China’s demand need to realize that the implications of remaining silent run much deeper than what they might have assumed: It means that they have allowed China to interfere with their companies’ operations and to meddle in their domestic affairs.
These governments could look to the White House when devising a response to China’s demand. US President Donald Trump’s administration denounced the demand as “Orwellian nonsense,” adding that Trump “will stand up for Americans resisting efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to impose Chinese political correctness on American companies and citizens.”
Taiwan is a de facto nation with a fully functioning government, which explains why China jumps at every opportunity to threaten innocent third parties to cover up that fact.
However, demanding that international airlines change the way they refer to Taiwan is hardly the most shocking piece of news about China’s bullying.
Last month, ABC News reported that two Australian high-school students of Taiwanese descent in Rockhampton, Queensland, saw their art — two barramundi-shaped Republic of China flags on a cattle statue to support a joint initiative between the Rockhampton Regional Council and Beef Australia to promote the local cattle industry — painted over by the council, which expressed concern that the flags would irritate China, one of Australia’s biggest export destinations.
News like this belies Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) 2014 statement that China is a “peaceful, amiable and civilized lion,” and poses the question: Is it China’s goal to elicit anger or ridicule through its actions to sideline Taiwan? What has it gained through such actions?
Perhaps Presidential Office spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said it best when responding to the Japanese airlines’ Web site change: “Such a move does not change the fact that Taiwan is a nation. It will only alienate people on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait and cost China the respect it has in the international community.”
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