NASA has become the latest foreign organization to upset China by referring to Taiwan as a country, the latest in a string of quarrels the Asian nation has waded into over wording it deems politically sensitive.
The US space agency has hurt the feelings of the Asian country’s 1.4 billion people with the reference on its Web site, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮).
The space agency needs to “correct its mistake as soon as possible,” Zhu told a regular news briefing yesterday in Beijing.
Screen grab from the Internet
A commentary published by People.cn — a Web site run by the People’s Daily, a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece — on Monday described the incident as “unforgivable.”
NASA lets Internet users sign up to send their name to Mars on a flight. Taiwan appears as an option on a “country” drop-down box, as does the Vatican.
It is unclear how long Taiwan has been called a country on the Web site, but more than 18 million people have registered.
Photo:Reuters
An e-mailed request for comment sent to NASA outside regular business hours was not immediately answered.
Foreign companies often get in trouble with the Chinese government over political issues.
H&M BOYCOTT
Chinese Internet users last week called for a boycott of Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M) over an undated statement on its Web site saying that it would not use cotton from the Xinjiang region.
The retailer was also criticized by the Communist Youth League and the People’s Liberation Army.
Western governments, including the US, accuse China of sending as many as 1 million Muslim Uighurs to work camps in Xinjiang.
Beijing denies the allegations, saying that it is fighting religious extremism and providing jobs.
In 2018, US airlines stopped referring to Taiwan as a country after pressure from the Chinese government.
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