Here are the recent headlines around the web about the matter:
Taiwan raps Google over map label
Taiwan protests over Google map
Taiwan huffs and puffs at Google Earth
Taiwan to Google: We're not a China province
(More headlines here..)
At least one blogger feels that Google is right.
My thinking is that Google will look the other way on this matter. If they budge, all territories undergoing some kind of dispute on their official geographic status will start lobbying Google to prove a political point or make headway in their cause.
What I find interesting is that governments are quickly recognizing Google as a global mapping authority and making great strides to make sure its name is correct or satellite views from it are concealed. The US government seemed to get their way on that request. :)
2 comments:
Come on, that article is from China for goodness sake. The issue of Taiwanese independence has been around for a long time. Right now, it's a very big issue in Taiwanese politics. Independence is not something that is fancied by just fringe groups---in a poll in 2004, 30% of the population supported independence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Independence
BTW, the Taiwanese government was headed up by Nationalists who fled mainland China. They practically took over an island whose residents shared relatively little interest in gaining control over the mainland.
In a Taiwaner's point of view, if Google did lable Taiwan as "a province of Republic of China", I would accept it, though I prefer simply "Taiwan". But shortening Republic of China as China is obviously misleading. When refering to china, everybody thinks of PROC instead of ROC. Obviously, Taiwan is not a province of PROC, at least not currently.
We do respect our own constitution, but this doesn't mean the naming can be deliberately misinterpreted.
To be accurate, our architecture of government was reconfigured lately, and the province layer is eliminated. So it's still not very precise to label Taiwan as a province of ROC.
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