The government has officially issued a protest to a Japanese state-run library over its wrongful designation of Taiwan as a part of the People’s Republic of China on its Web site.
The ministry found that a drop-down menu on the English version of the National Diet Library’s Web site lists Taiwan as “Taiwan, Province of China,” while the Japanese version simply uses “Taiwan,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Jeff Liu (劉永健) said yesterday.
He was referring to a drop-down menu that asks applicants trying to set up an account with the library to click on their country of residence.
Photo: screen grab from the National Diet Library Web site
Liu reiterated the government’s stance that neither the Republic of China (Taiwan) nor the People’s Republic of China are subordinate to the other, and it called on the library to swiftly correct the mistake.
The ministry has also asked Taiwan’s representative office in Tokyo to contact the library directly to lodge a protest, Liu said.
The comments came after a group of overseas Taiwanese in Japan discovered the designation after a new version of the Web site went online on Jan. 15.
The All Japan Taiwanese Union on Sunday sent a letter of protest demanding that National Diet Library Director-General Motonobu Yoshinaga swiftly correct the designation, which it described as “erroneous and humiliating to Taiwanese.”
The union said in its open letter that Taiwan is a democratic sovereign state independent from the communist People’s Republic of China regime.
It was not clear if the letter reached Yoshinaga, but as of noon yesterday, the drop-down menu on the Web site had not been corrected.
Founded in 1948, the library was established to assist members of the National Diet of Japan in researching matters of public policy.
The library is similar in purpose and scope to the US Library of Congress.
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