Airlines switching to ‘Taiwan, China’ despite White House’s rejection of ‘Orwellian nonsense’ – but US carriers hold out
After call from Beijing to refrain from listing Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as countries, many foreign airlines change their websites’ wording
Global airlines are adjusting to referring to Taiwan explicitly as a part of China, despite the White House’s call this month to stand firm against such “Orwellian nonsense”.
Associated Press found 20 carriers, including Air Canada, British Airways and Lufthansa, that now refer to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing considers Chinese territory, as a part of China on their global websites.
There are just three days left for dozens of foreign airlines to decide whether to respect Beijing’s demand that they do so, or face consequences that some say could cripple their China business.
The spread of “Taiwan, China” on the drop-down menus and maps of airline websites represents an alignment with the wishes of Chinese President Xi Jinping for foreign companies to conform to China’s geopolitical vision.
But critics say that China’s incremental efforts to use its economic power to forge new international norms – in this case regarding Taiwan’s status – create worrying precedents, and that beyond fiery missives there is little Washington can do to unify a fractured global response and resist it.
“What’s at stake is that we’re allowing a revisionist regime with a terrible track record on freedom of speech to dictate what we say and write in our own countries,” said J. Michael Cole, a Taipei-based senior fellow with the China Policy Institute and the University of Nottingham’s Taiwan studies programme.