A Chinese think-tank criticized Apple, Amazon and a number of other firms for the way they reference Taiwan and Hong Kong, Reuters reported. Tawain is considered a wayward-province by China. Hong Kong was returned to China by the British in 1997 and is a semi-autonomous region. Apple is amongst a number of firms that refers to both Hong Kong and Tawain as separate from mainland China, something the Chinese government has been trying to crack down on recently.
China last year ramped up pressure on foreign companies including Marriott International and Qantas for referring to Taiwan and Hong Kong as separate from China in drop down menus or other material. The report was co-written by [Chinese Academy of Social Sciences] CASS and the Internet Development Research Institution of Peking University. An official at the Internet Development Research Institution told Reuters that it had not yet been published to the public and declined to provide a copy.
Check It Out: Chinese Think-Tank Blasts Apple’s Taiwan and Hong Kong References
A timely post, Charlotte, considering a discussion thread over on John K’s ‘Tim Cook Failure’ piece. Thanks for posting.
For those of us who live and/or work in the region, the China/Taiwan dynamic is not simply sensitive but important to both entities. Taiwan continues to assert its independence and sociopolitical (and increasingly cultural) distinction from China, and to vigorously push back on any notion that it is ‘China’; whereas China has, over the past few years, ramped up pressure on the international community to adopt the Communist Party line that Taiwan is China and to refer to it as such, as well as to cease bilateral relations with the nation that it regards as a breakaway province.
Apple are correct to note Taiwan’s independence, in the spirit of self-determination, until such time as that changes, a timeline which, so long as China remains under communist single party rule, most Taiwanese today would likely define as, ‘When hell freezes over’.