A NASA Web site that offers researchers downloadable satellite data no longer lists Taiwan as “Taiwan, Province of China” on the page. After a Taiwanese blogger who goes by the pseudonym “Shortcake” wrote about it in his blog, a large group of Internet users sent protest e-mails to NASA, which changed the name to “Taiwan” on Thursday.
Shortcake said the Web site used to refer to Taiwan as “Taiwan,” but speculated that the government’s talk of a “diplomatic truce” with China led to the change on the NASA Web site.
The blogger said this violated the 1996 Memorandum of Understanding signed by the US Department of State, which stated that the US government and its officials should refer to Taiwan as “Taiwan.”
Shortcake wrote a protest letter to the agency and invited fellow Internet users to copy his letter and send it to NASA. Within a day, NASA edited the Web page and changed Taiwan’s name back to “Taiwan.”
Shortcake went to school in the US and worked there for more than a decade. In his blog, he discusses acts by governments, agencies and international organizations that degrade Taiwan’s national sovereignty.
This is not the first time he has written a letter of protest and called on other Internet users to join in the written protest. Most organizations, after receiving letters of protest, change Taiwan’s name to Taiwan on their Web sites, he said, citing a US railway company, Google Maps, the WHO, the Global Invasive Species Database and Nokia as examples.
Shortcake returned to Taiwan in July last year, quitting a well-paid job because of the passion he felt for his country, he said.
Shortcake said he had promoted activism because he felt that Taiwan is often degraded in the international community.
“It is a country’s basic right to maintain its name, yet Taiwan’s name has been abused by others over and over again, revealing that there are still deficiencies in Taiwan’s right to exercise sovereignty,” he said.
He said he felt he had the duty to protest this treatment and help the nation combat it.
Over the years, Shortcake said he has been pleased to find many like-minded people. As long as people are willing to speak out, Taiwan has a good chance of having its name respected, he said.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
Taiwanese celebrities Hank Chen (陳漢典) and Lulu Huang (黃路梓茵) announced yesterday that they are planning to marry. Huang announced and posted photos of their engagement to her social media pages yesterday morning, joking that the pair were not just doing marketing for a new show, but “really getting married.” “We’ve decided to spend all of our future happy and hilarious moments together,” she wrote. The announcement, which was later confirmed by the talent agency they share, appeared to come as a surprise even to those around them, with veteran TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) saying he was “totally taken aback” by the news. Huang,
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult
RSS