Taiwan’s government has asked Web search company Google to stop calling the self-ruled island a province of China on its Google Maps service, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Foreign ministry spokesman, Michel Lu, explained: It is incorrect to call Taiwan a province of China because we are not. We have contacted Google to express our position and asked them to correct the description.
Oh dear, oh dear. A suitably indignant Taiwanese government has therefore asked Google to correct the outrage to read the Republic of Taiwan – despite the fact that, as Reuter notes, the island of 23 million souls is recognized by only 26 states in the world and has no seat at the United Nations.
China views Taiwan as a breakaway province and has threatened to attack the island of 23 million people if it pushes for formal statehood. The two split in a civil war ended in 1949. Taiwan maintains it is a sovereign, independent state that is officially called the Republic of China.
The small pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union has urged the public to write a protest email to Google, demanding the search engine describe Taiwan as an independent state in Asia.
The foreign ministry has not received a response from Google.
Google has maintained a stony silence on the matter, presumably while it tries to work out a solution which will please both the Taiwanese and the hosts of the ‘lucrative, burgeoning, inviting’ Chinese internet search business opportunity market.