US, China in fresh row as Beijing tells foreign airlines they will be punished for failing to respect territorial claims, report says
Government says it will use new social credit regulation to hit back at carriers that refer to Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau as independent territories
Foreign airlines that refer to Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau as being independent from China could face punishment under a new social credit regulation issued by Beijing late last year.
According to a report by The Washington Post, the Civil Aviation Administration of China sent a letter to 36 carriers last month saying that companies that failed to acknowledge the one-China principle may be subjected to closer administrative scrutiny or even given demerits on their credit records.
The article included a copy of a letter, written in Mandarin, which the newspaper said it had obtained from United Airlines, one of the original recipients. Phone calls and faxes from the South China Morning Post to the administration on Sunday and Monday went unanswered.
Koji Nagata, United Airlines’ director for Asia-Pacific corporate communications, told the Post, however, that the company had passed the letter on to the White House.
“As to this matter, we have deferred it to the US Government since this is a diplomatic issue to be resolved among governments,” he said in an email.