Airlines | Taiwan denounces China moves to limit its global profile

Taiwan yesterday denounced China’s latest moves to increase its global isolation, saying residents of the self-governing island would reject attempts to deny its existence.

China in recent days has forced international airlines to stop referring to Taiwan as a separate country on their websites. It also allegedly prompted the Asian Olympic Committee to withdraw the island’s right to host a youth competition scheduled for next year in the central city of Taichung.

“These are attempts to destroy Taiwan’s sovereignty, and erase it from the world map,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrew Lee told reporters at a news conference.

“I believe that no Taiwanese people would accept such a thing,” Lee said.

Beijing’s action is aimed at increasing Taiwan’s isolation and prodding it toward a political union with China. Taiwan is already excluded from the United Nations and other major international organizations, and China has been steadily poaching away the self-governing island’s dwindling number of diplomatic partners.

Beijing has also stepped up its military threats by sending warplanes on patrols around the island and staging war games on its side of the Taiwan Strait.

It has also offered preferential terms for talented young people from the high-tech island to work in cities such as Shanghai and Beijing that offer much larger potential markets than those available in Taiwan.

China has taken an increasingly hard line since the election of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who has refused to endorse Beijing’s insistence that Taiwan is a part of China to be brought under its control eventually.

Tsai’s office issued a statement criticizing the move to cancel the 2019 East Asian Youth Games in Taichung as “brazen and crude political meddling in sports.”

“Taiwan condemns China’s behavior in the strongest possible terms,” the statement said.

BEIJING UNSATISFIED

China said the changes U.S. airlines have agreed to make on how they refer to Taiwan is incomplete with the carriers seeking two more weeks to fully implement the requirement.

American Airlines Group Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc., United Continental Holdings Inc. and Hawaiian Holdings Inc. are the last four foreign airlines out of 44 that didn’t fully comply with an order to reflect the island as part of China, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement. The deadline was yesterday. The regulator didn’t say what changes the airlines promised were incomplete.

U.S. airlines were altering their website displays for Taiwan, and refer to the island only by the city names of Taipei and Kaohsiung, or by airport codes. Route maps may no longer display a country label for Taiwan. The White House in May dismissed China’s directive as “Orwellian nonsense,” saying it was part of a trend by the Communist Party to impose its political views on U.S. citizens and private companies.

CAAC sent a letter in April 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, the order said. MDT/Agencies