Lawmakers on Monday criticized the Novotel Taipei Taoyuan International Airport hotel for listing the nation as “Taiwan, China” on its Web site for online reservations, despite being of a subsidiary of state-run China Airlines Ltd.
The transit hotel suspended operations after being fined NT$1.26 million (US$45,029) by the Taoyuan Department of Public Health on May 10 for contravening the Communicable Disease Control Act (傳染病防治法) after the hotel was linked to a cluster of COVID-19 infections.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Mark Ho (何志偉) said the hotel has crossed the line by listing Taiwan as part of China.
Photo: CNA
China Airlines should check its other subsidiaries to see whether similar practices exist, he said.
“The hotel has sparked a public outrage for causing a cluster infection of COVID-19. Now it has downgraded Taiwan to a province of China. It should make a correction right away,” he said.
Lo Cheng-chung (羅承宗), director of the Institute of Financial and Economic Law at the Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, said the Ministry of Education has warned university lecturers against using the phrase “Taiwan, China” when giving presentations at seminars and in academic journals.
“However, the hotel, which the Ministry of Transportation and Communications oversees, refers to Taiwan as part of China. This is outrageous,” Lo said.
In April last year, China Airlines delivered 10 million masks to European countries, he said.
“While the packaging on the masks highlighted the message that ‘Taiwan can help,’ it also had the name of the airline, China Airlines, on it. As such, the masks, which were meant to show goodwill from Taiwan, were mistaken as gifts from China,” Lo said.
“Now the transit hotel refers to Taiwan as part of China, which would make foreigners think they are in China,” Lo said, adding that most foreigners already have trouble distinguishing between the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China.
This month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lodged a strong protest against the WHO for referring to Taiwan as “Taiwan, China.”
“As the most important international health organization, the WHO should not succumb to pressure from the People’s Republic of China and violate the principle of neutrality in this political issue,” the ministry said.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS