There are no obvious connections between the 7-Eleven retail chain in Japan and the Philippines’ national security concerns in the South China Sea. Here is one, one that also takes in Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC), the government of Denmark and Taiwanese plastic surgeons on the way.
Japan’s 7-Eleven on Friday last week posted on social media an image of uniforms worn by the chain store’s employees in various locations, including Taiwan, the US, Hawaii, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Cambodia and the Philippines.
If this was intended to promote a sense of camaraderie within the 7-Eleven family, it backfired. Taiwan was tagged with the name “China (Taiwan).” Taiwanese and Japanese posted comments complaining about the misrepresentation and insensitivity of the post. Japan’s 7-Eleven removed the post during the early hours of Saturday, admitted a lack of consideration and apologized.
Was it carelessness or was the company pressured to render Taiwan’s entry in this way?
As one commenter noted, the uniform for the US state of Hawaii was not tagged as “US (Hawaii)”; the Chinese province of Guangdong and the Chinese special administrative region of Hong Kong were represented using the same format as the Taiwan uniform. Does this suggest intention?
CBC on June 14 ran a story about alleged ties between a Taiwanese Buddhist group and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), describing one monk as being “between his home country, Prince Edward Island, and China.”
CBC on June 17 issued a “clarification,” saying that the story had included a reference to Taiwan as “a country that China is threatening to invade,” whereas “in fact, Taiwan is a self-governing island, and there is dispute around who controls it.”
It is unfortunate that CBC chose not to “take a fact-based attitude,” as CCP spokespeople often say.
There is no “dispute” about who controls Taiwan. The phrase “self-governing island” is contradictory: If Taiwan is self-governing, then presumably it controls itself. The CBC “clarification” muddied the waters, it is a distortion of logic designed to adhere, out of commercial cowardice, to CCP messaging. The “dispute” starts and ends in Beijing.
Nobody in Taiwan disputes who controls Taiwan, certainly not the Taiwanese doctors who attended the plastic surgeon Olympiad World Congress in Singapore last month. Unlike the Chinese delegation, they were unoffended by the event organizer’s listing of Taiwan as a participating nation. The Chinese attendees lodged a complaint and walked out, while the Taiwanese preferred to maintain their “fact-based attitude” and national pride.
The Danish government on May 6 revised registration practices allowing Taiwanese to list “Taiwan” as their nationality and replaced it with “China.” This was regarded as an expression of Copenhagen’s pragmatism, a political decision not based on a “fact-based attitude,” but designed to not offend Beijing.
A Washington Post report on Monday said that Manila is working behind the scenes to enhance defensive cooperation with Taiwan, in a security cooperation that is “further along” than publicly disclosed. Manila’s disengagement and departure from its observation of the “one China” policy is because the CCP has forced its hand: It has become clear that China presents a clear and present threat to the Philippines.
Within all challenges lies opportunity.
Taiwan cannot necessarily rely on getting its message across with the help of other governments, corporations or news agencies due to political and commercial considerations, but it can hope to get support from civic groups, non-governmental organizations, netizens and parliamentary groups, where there is sufficient awareness, sense of shared purpose and consequent motivation. That, and a willingness to adopt a fact-based attitude.
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