Beijing [China], January 21 (ANI): Ahead of Taiwan Vice President William Lai‘s plans to meet with US officials, China has strongly opposed this contact between the United States and Taiwan. Lai is set to travel to Honduras to attend the inauguration of newly-elected President Xiomara Castro later this month, Taiwan Focus reported. During his travel to the Central American country, Taiwan Vice President is planning stopovers in the US.
Lai will have a series of phone calls and virtual meetings with US government officials and political representatives, the report added. “The so-called ‘stopover’ of Taiwan‘s Democratic Progressive Party in the United States to establish contact with the local authorities is yet another trick of the island’s administration to break away. But no tricks will change the fact that there is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is part of it,” said Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of China‘s State Council on Thursday.
The spokesperson asked the US to respect the “One China” principle and refrain from sending mixed signals to pro-independence forces in Taiwan, stressing that Beijing is strongly opposed to any official contacts between the two.
The spokesperson also advised against the support of Taiwanese independence ambitions, saying that it would further destabilize the situation and backfire on Taiwan itself.
China continues to stake claims over Taiwan despite its self-governance for over seven decades. Beijing views the island as its province, while Taiwan maintains that it is an autonomous country with political and economic relations with several other nations. (ANI)
China fines 7-Eleven chain for marking Taiwan as independent nation on its website
Beijing [China], January 21 (ANI): Beijing has fined the retail chain 7-Eleven for recognising Taiwan as an independent nation on its website. According to reports, Tokyo-based Seven & i Holdings owned convenience store chain, 7-Eleven, has been fined 150,000 yuan (USD 23,500) by the Chinese authorities, Just Earth News reported.
Beijing claims full sovereignty over Taiwan, a democracy of almost 24 million people located off the southeastern coast of mainland China, despite the fact that the two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades.
Many popular corporations operating in China have on previous occasions removed any mention of Taiwan as a separate nation state from their websites, and on certain occasions even tendered official apologies after depicting the Chinese map without featuring Taiwan as part of Chinese territory, Just Earth News reported. It further reported that companies including Gap, Daimler AG, United Continental Holdings, ANA Holdings have backed down after depicting Taiwan as a separate nation.
According to Just Earth News, in May 2018, Gap Inc. had to officially apologise after selling a T-shirt on their retail outlets which depicted an incorrect map of China after social media users in China pointed out how certain Chinese-claimed territories, including south Tibet, the island of Taiwan and the South China Sea were omitted. The fine and warning to Seven&i Holdings was issued in December last year as per a government-linked credit information website.
The report on the website highlighted how the company further failed to describe certain South China Sea islands by their Chinese names as well as the disputed Diaoyu islands, known as Senkaku in Japan, Just Earth News reported.
It further stated that the report also alleged that the map shared by the company contained errors in labeling borders along the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region. Taiwan and its legitimacy is a highly sensitive territorial issue in China as Beijing considers the province as a self-ruled democratic island which has been governed separately since 1949.
China also objects to any references of Hong Kong and Macau being separately governed independent states, even though they are special administrative regions with greater autonomy, Just Earth News reported. (ANI)
