January 17, 2019
No.018
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) strongly condemns the Chinese authorities for their recent outrageous demand on 66 multinational companies to change their designation for Taiwan to “Taiwan, China.”
These firms—which were among the world’s top 500 companies in 2017, including Apple, Nike, Amazon and Siemens—were named in The Blue Book on the Cyber Rule of Law in China 2018 as having identified Taiwan as such rather than by “Taiwan, China,” and were threatened with penalty in accordance with the law. The book was published recently by the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Internet Development Research Institution of Peking University. Following its coercion of airlines and multinational companies in early 2018, this is a new request from China to change companies’ references to Taiwan on their websites. MOFA strongly condemns China for its outrageous demands and urges the PRC to refrain from further actions to avoid further alienating the Taiwanese people and the amicable development of cross-strait relations.
China’s moves to impose its executive and judicial jurisdiction as well as political ideology on foreign companies not only expose its malicious intent in using political tactics to interfere with private enterprises, but also violate the spirit of free international commerce. MOFA once again calls on the international community not to remain silent and accommodating in order to prevent the Chinese government from intensifying its intimidations. MOFA also calls on related countries to take stock of China’s bullying measures and take necessary steps to assist these companies in refusing China's unreasonable demands.
MOFA reiterates that the Chinese government should face the fact of the existence of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and that Taiwan is absolutely not a province of the People’s Republic of China, nor is it subject to the jurisdiction of the Chinese government. Any attempts to suppress and belittle Taiwan will only cause antipathy among the Taiwanese people and undermine cross-strait relations as well as regional peace and stability.(E)