Taiwan attacks China’s ‘outrageous demands’ on multinational companies

TAIPEI - Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has strongly condemned Chinese authorities for what it calls "their recent outrageous demand" that 66 multinational companies change their designation for "Taiwan" to "Taiwan, China".

MOFA said the firms, some of which were in the world's top 500 companies in 2017, include Apple, Nike, Amazon and Siemens.

They are named in The Blue Book on the Cyber Rule of Law in China 2018 as having identified Taiwan as "Taiwan" rather than "Taiwan, China" and are threatened with penalties "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.

In its statement, MOFA says that, following coercion by China on airlines and multinational companies in early 2018, this is a new request from China to change companies' references to Taiwan on their websites.

MOFA urged China "to refrain from further actions to avoid harming the feelings of the Taiwanese people and the amicable development of cross-strait relations".

It said: "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 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 to take necessary steps to assist these companies to refuse 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. www.mofa.com.tw (ATI).