{"id":55,"date":"2010-01-17T07:01:10","date_gmt":"2010-01-17T07:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/?p=55"},"modified":"2010-01-17T07:01:10","modified_gmt":"2010-01-17T07:01:10","slug":"55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/2010\/01\/17\/55\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Google: Taiwan is Taiwan<\/h1>\n<h2>Battles over Internet freedom, corporate responsibility, and Taiwan intersect in latest episode<!--more--><\/h2>\n<table width=\"100%\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"left\">\n<div>By Leeshai Lemish<\/div>\n<div>Special to The Epoch Times<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<td align=\"right\">Oct 13,  2005<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><span class=\"frame-outer  \"><span><span><span><span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/news_images\/2005-10-13-map-copy.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\ndocument.writeln('<SCR'+'IPT language=\\'JavaScript\\' S'+'RC=\"http:\/\/media.adcentriconline.com\/adcentric\/tag\/1636\/1527\/20225?rnd=%%REALRAND%%\"><\/SCR'+'IPT>');\n\/\/ ]]&gt;\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script src=\"http:\/\/media.adcentriconline.com\/adcentric\/tag\/1636\/1527\/20225?rnd=%%REALRAND%%\"><\/script> <script src=\"http:\/\/media.adcentriconline.com\/adcentric\/tag\/1636\/1527\/20225?rnd=%%REALRAND%%\"><\/script> <noscript><br \/>\n<span class=\"frame-outer  \"><span><span><span><span><a\nhref=\"http:\/\/media.adcentriconline.com\/adcentric\/click\/1636\/1527\/20225\"><img\nborder=\"0\"\nsrc=\"http:\/\/media.adcentriconline.com\/adcentric\/data\/1636\/1527\/20225;image?rnd=%%REALRAND%%\"><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<\/noscript><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Temporarily quieting outrage over its bowing to pressure from Beijing, Google recognized that Taiwan is not really a province of China.<\/p>\n<p>Up until last Sunday, Google Maps listed the island as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Taiwan, Province of China.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But a series of vociferous protests led to Google changing the listing to simply \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Taiwan.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Taiwan is an independent, sovereign state. Taiwan is not part of China,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Taiwan Solidarity Union legislative caucus whip David Huang said, according to the<em> Taipei Times<\/em> . Protests began registering at least as early as mid-September, but picked up last week. Taiwan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen took a public stance last Thursday. Also that day, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco (which would, under any other circumstances, be known as the Taiwanese Consulate) delivered a protest to the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s headquarters. During a radio interview last Friday, Taiwan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Vice-President Annette Lu said that Google owes Taiwan an apology.<\/p>\n<p><strong> Ex-pats Chip In<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Expatriate communities on both sides of the Pacific got involved as well. On Tuesday Taiwanese residing in California\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Silicon Valley protested outside of Google\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mountain View headquarters.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Taiwan is an Independent Country,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153One Taiwan \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one China,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d their banners read. And, in recognition of Google\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s amendment, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We Appreciate Your Response.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Ryan Tierney, an American ex-pat who had studied in Taiwan and is currently working there circulated an email urging Internet users to rethink their Google-based Gmail accounts, saying he had stopped using his.<\/p>\n<p>He also encouraged people to go on Google\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/bin\/request.py\" target=\"_blank\"> comments site<\/a> and express their opinions. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Please, for me and the country I currently call home, write to Google and tell them this won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stand,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Tierney said.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If the governments of the world won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t secure for this island the human right of recognition, we must ensure that the citizens of the world clearly understand the situation,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is a language battle and it must be fought on all fronts.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese Communist Party in Beijing insists that Taiwan is a renegade province that had historically been a part of China and should be returned to Mainland China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sovereignty. Taiwan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s modern history, which dates back to the end of the 16th century, tells a different story.<\/p>\n<p><strong> Whose Island is It Anyway?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The island has an aboriginal community that had migrated to Taiwan over 12,000 years ago. During the 17th century, the Dutch took over Taiwan, then known as Formosa, or the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Beautiful Island.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In the latter part of the century, a Chinese pirate fleeing from the Manchurian forces that had invaded China evicted the Dutch, but the Manchus defeated this last remnant of China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s previous Ming Dynasty twenty years later.<\/p>\n<p>Despite repeated attempts, however, the Manchus failed to get lasting control of the island, as its inhabitants repeatedly fought back and Taiwan was thus largely left to its own devices for 200 years. During that time, Mainlanders came to Taiwan fleeing wars and famine. But they did not come as representatives of Beijing, itself ruled by the foreign Manchus, a people from regions northeast of China.<\/p>\n<p>The island had been part of Imperial China for a period of only eight years, from 1887-1895 under the Manchus, before it came under Japanese occupation for fifty years. At the end of World War II, the Allies assigned temporary power over Taiwan to China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Nationalist government.<\/p>\n<p>The divide was sealed four years later, at the end of China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 1949 Civil War. Chiang Kai-shek\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Nationalist forces, exhausted from years of fighting with the Japanese, lost to Mao Zedong\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Communist military and fled to Taiwan. Two China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s were then established \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the Peoples\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Republic of China with its capital in Beijing, and the Republic of China with its capital in Taipei.<\/p>\n<p>With United States support, Taiwan initially held a United Nations\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 seat, including a spot as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. In 1971, however, as relations between the United States and Beijing warmed, Taiwan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Republic of China lost its U.N. seat to the People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Republic and has been in international limbo since.<\/p>\n<p><strong> One Strait, Two Countries?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Supporters of continued Taiwanese sovereignty point out that the island has its own flag, its own currency, its own international sports teams and its own, elected, government.<\/p>\n<p>Not having undergone half a century of communist campaigns, Taiwan has been able to preserve freedom of religion, as well as ancient Chinese art collections and use of traditional Chinese characters in writing. With infrastructure that had been put in place during the Japanese occupation, Taiwan has become one of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Asian Tigers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the world economy. Since a period known as the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153White Terror\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ended in the 1970s, and especially with the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwanese have enjoyed freedom of the press and a thriving, if nascent and sometimes corrupt, democracy.<\/p>\n<p>In Mainland China the press and education systems continue to be tightly controlled on sensitive issues like Taiwan. As a result, along with strong nationalist sentiments, there appears to be a strong consensus among Chinese that Taiwan needs to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153returned to its motherland,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with hard-liners advocating for a military invasion of the island.<\/p>\n<p>In a series of intimidation moves, Beijing has deployed missiles aimed at the island that is only 100 miles away, tested rockets just inside Taiwan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s territorial waters, and recently threatened the United States with a first-strike nuclear war in case America comes to the island\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s defense.<\/p>\n<p><strong> China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s War Goes Cyber<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Many have touted the Internet as an opportunity to elude China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s control of the media and to provide a space for safe discussion of sensitive topics such as human rights, democracy, or Taiwan. Optimists see the Internet as bearing the potential of being a key force in creating an open public sphere needed for China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s democratization.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, Western companies, apparently following the allure of contracts in China, have played into Beijing\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hands and been accused by critics as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153kowtowing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to pressure from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo!, admitted that his company had provided Chinese authorities with email information about journalist Shi Tao. The information was then used to convict and sentence the journalist to ten years in prison for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153divulging state secrets.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In response, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Fronti\u00c3\u00a8res) called Yahoo! \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a Chinese police informant\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that helped the CCP convict a good journalist.<\/p>\n<p>In his book,<em> Losing the New China<\/em> , Ethan Gutmann disclosed that a Yahoo! representative \u00e2\u20ac\u0153admitted that the search phrase \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcTaiwan independence\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 on Chinese Yahoo! would yield no results, because Yahoo! had disabled searches for select keywords.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gutmann also wrote about how Chinese authorities blocked Google in 2002. When Google was reopened, searches for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jiang Zemin,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d then head of the CCP, received the message \u00e2\u20ac\u0153no entries found,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and searches on Google for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Falun Gong\u00e2\u20ac\u009d led to the user\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Web access being shut down.<\/p>\n<p>In September 2004, Google publicly acknowledged that it censors certain websites out of China-based searches. Research conducted by institutes such as Dynamic Internet Technology showed that certain websites that would normally come up under Google\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s expansive search engine do not come up for Chinese Net users.<\/p>\n<p>At least for now, after last weekend, searches on Google Maps for a place known as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Taiwan, Province of China\u00e2\u20ac\u009d come up empty, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google: Taiwan is Taiwan Battles over Internet freedom, corporate responsibility, and Taiwan intersect in latest episode<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}