Beijing extends ‘Orwellian’ compliance deadline

Beijing has offered to extendf the deadline for international airlines to change how they refer to Chinese territories, after many of them said they needed more time in order to comply.

China’s Civil Aviation Administration said late last week that only 18 of some 44 contacted airlines had made changes to how they list the territories of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau on their company websites. Beijing is demanding that the jurisdictions be clearly labeled as a part of China.

On April 25, 44 international airlines were sent letters stating that they had failed to adhere to the one-China policy and would face “severe consequences” if they did not make changes to their website.

According to some media reports, failure to comply with the demands would result in the matter being referred to “the relevant cyber-security authorities,” implying that the airlines’ websites would be blocked in China.

The demand prompted a strong response from the U.S. government, who called the push “Orwellian nonsense.”

But in a statement published on Friday, the Civil Aviation Administration said that 26 airlines had applied for an extension, citing technical reasons.

Macau and Hong Kong are sometimes identified as separate territories on the promotional materials of foreign companies for ease of distinguishing them from the mainland, where different laws and rules apply. Many companies use the official designation, ‘Special Administrative Region of China’.