Nike, Apple and Amazon called out for not adhering to One-China policy
Taiwan has decried a recently-released report by a Chinese institution which called out major brands for failing to list the island as part of China.
The report accused the brands of deliberately violating the policy and urged the Chinese government to punish them.
The 2018 Annual Report on Cyber Rule of Law, published by Beijing-based Social Science Academic Press, slammed the likes of Nike, Apple and Amazon for failing to recognise the One-China policy, which states that there is only one Chinese government even though there are two governments - the People's Republic of China (China) and the Republic of China (Taiwan).
The report accused the brands of deliberately violating the policy and urged the Chinese government to punish the companies through the removal of their licenses or suspending their operations if they do not take any action.
The Taiwanese government slammed the report as an attempt by Beijing to remove Taiwan from the sight of the world, according to The South China Morning Post.
Alex Huang, Taiwan’s presidential spokesman, said Taiwan had forged close links with the international community and was backed by countries which shared its values of democracy and freedom, and that the Taiwanese people would not give up their belief in freedom and democracy and bow to pressure from the mainland over its demands.
“Regardless of whether to use ‘one country, two systems’ to coerce Taiwan, or to resort by political and economic means to pressure international enterprises to change our title, what China has done would not only impact regional stability but would also make China lose the world’s trust and respect,” Huang was quoted as saying. “It would also serve to sabotage the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.”
The report, which studied 500 top transnational companies based in 32 countries, also named 53 firms for “misidentifying” Hong Kong, which is governed under the ‘One country, two systems’ policy, which is a special autonomous region within China that maintain separate legal, administrative and judicial systems from the rest of the country.