We’re searching for a description of the Chinese government’s behavior and can’t decide among bullying, extortion or coercion. The White House went with “Orwellian nonsense.” Geopolitical chutzpah also comes to mind.
What Beijing did was demand that international airlines — including United, American and Delta — change their websites to pretend Taipei is no longer the capital of Taiwan.
Because China claims Taiwan as Chinese territory, it doesn’t want to see any references contradicting that assertion. Therefore, book a flight on United and Taipei seems to float in space because “Taiwan” has been deleted from the listing. At some foreign airlines, including British Airways and Air France, China’s conquest of Taiwan appears complete. Both carriers list Taipei as a city in “Taiwan, China.”
This is a symbolic power move by China. It has the feel of Cold War-era propaganda, but let’s not dismiss it as simply playing games with maps. China is a rising military power with long-term ambitions to challenge the United States in the Pacific. Look at the South China Sea and you’ll find the Chinese have done more than monkey with place names: The People’s Liberation Army dredged sand to create islands with military installations in order to bolster claims of sovereignty over an expanse of ocean with crucial shipping lanes.
Taiwan as a potential flashpoint dates to the 1949 Chinese revolution. As communist forces took control, the Nationalists — led by Chiang Kai-shek — fled across the strait to Taiwan, which developed separately. Beijing never relinquished its claim, while Taiwan never proclaimed independence, leaving the island with an intentionally fuzzy identity. Taiwan is a self-ruled democracy, a key trading partner with both the U.S. and China, and it has a security relationship with the United States. But officially, Washington has diplomatic relations with Beijing, not Taipei. The status quo is odd, yet it works.
Then every once in a while China tries to assert dominance, by, say, demanding that airlines change their references to Taiwan. Europeans meekly obliged. U.S. carriers tried holding out, but China could strip them of landing rights on the mainland or banish them from websites there. Fighting back would take a bigger effort by the U.S. government and U.S. business.
If China believes so strongly in symbolic actions, then let’s make the message clear: Bullying airlines into fudging Taiwan’s identity is an act of political aggression. American executives trying to do business on the mainland know they should be mistrustful of the Chinese government. Now they’ll get an extra reminder each time they consult a route map of Asia.
