Airlines plan to accept China demands on naming Taiwan

Travelers check in for flights at the Delta Air Lines check-in counters at Beijing Capital International Airport

U.S. airlines plan to comply with a Chinese government demand that they revise their website identifications of Taiwan to reflect China’s claim on the island territory, said a person familiar with the discussions.

The U.S. carriers affected by the mandate – American Airlines Group Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc., United Continental Holdings Inc., and Hawaiian Holdings Inc. – will begin to change the Taiwan references over the next day or two, said the person, who asked not to be named because discussions among the carriers were private.

The four airlines had been hoping for a negotiated resolution between the U.S. and Chinese governments ahead of yesterday’s deadline. Other airlines, including Qantas Airways Ltd., Air France-KLM and Deutsche Lufthansa AG, have already cooperated with China’s wishes.

In April, the Civil Aviation Administration of China sent a letter to more than 40 foreign airlines telling them that they shouldn’t place China, Hong Kong and Taiwan on an equal footing, and must refer to “China Taiwan” or the “China Taiwan region.” Maps must display the territories in the same color as mainland China and the websites can’t place Taiwan in other categories such as Southeast Asia, the order said.

China’s foreign ministry applauded the airlines’ changes as “positive progress.” China welcomes foreign businesses if they “abide by Chinese laws and regulations, sovereignty and territorial feelings, and the feelings of the Chinese people,” ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said yesterday.

“We’re a business with significant international activities and we need to deal with regulations in all of those jurisdictions,” Peter Ingram, Hawaiian’s chief executive officer, said Tuesday by telephone. “And obviously sometimes that can put us in challenging positions in one jurisdiction versus another.”

Hawaiian consulted with its U.S. peers and government officials in both the U.S. and China before deciding to comply, Ingram said. The company doesn’t fly to Taiwan itself but does sell tickets through a codeshare relationship with China Airlines Ltd., which flies nonstop from Taipei to Honolulu. Hawaiian also operates its own service to Beijing.

China has waged a campaign to force global businesses to conform to its world view if they want to stay in its good graces. Democratically governed Taiwan has been a central issue among the territorial disputes, especially after the Trump administration’s growing ties with the island’s pro-independence President Tsai Ing-Wen.

China and Taiwan have been ruled separately since Chiang Kai-
shek’s Nationalist government fled to Taipei in 1949, and the Communist Party regards the island as a province to be taken by force if necessary. Hong Kong and Macau were also requested by the aviation authority to be referred to as Chinese territories.

Airlines feared a failure to comply would result in some kind of commercial penalty from China, which would threaten the carriers’ operating conditions in the country’s fast-growing aviation market.

Hong Kong’s flag carrier Cathay Pacific listed Taiwan as part of China on its website on yesterday after a request from mainland authorities. Cathay Pacific and subsidiary Cathay Dragon had previously listed Taiwan as its own entity, but as of yesterday morning, the island was listed as “Taiwan, China” on both its English and Chinese language websites. Air India also chose to rename Taiwan as Chinese Taipei on its website after the threat of a “hefty’’ penalty for non-compliance.

In early May, the White House had dismissed China’s directive to the airlines as “Orwellian nonsense,” adding it was part of a growing trend by the Chinese Communist Party to impose its political views on U.S. citizens and private companies.

“We would oppose a government’s demand on private corporations that private corporations label something the way that the government demands it to do that,” said Heather Nauert, a spokeswoman for the State Department. She referred questions about the airlines to the individual companies.

Last year, airlines made 7.95 million flights between China and the U.S., a 5.8 percent increase. United, Air China and China Eastern together account for more than 50 percent of the market share, followed by China Southern. Hainan Air replaced Delta as the fifth-largest carrier on this route amid its aggressive launch of direct flights from second-tier Chinese cities to the U.S. MDT/Agencies