The government of Taiwan has sent a request to a number of air carriers with the requirement to designate the territory of the island as a separate state. The failure of this threatens companies with “countermeasures” from the local authorities.
Earlier it was reported that in April the Civil Aviation Administration of China sent a letter to 44 foreign airlines demanding to change their status on Taiwan according to the principle of “one China” and designate the island not as an independent state, but as part of the PRC.
The Taiwan authorities in turn demanded to point the island as an independent state from China.
“We wrote a letter to foreign airlines on August 3, asking them to make the necessary adjustments and are currently considering possible countermeasures”, said the country’s Minister of Transport and Communications of Taiwan, Wu Hong-Mo. According to him, the government of the island has not yet received replies from the carriers.
Among the possible measures against the companies may be a change in the time intervals provided by them at Taiwan airports or refusal to use teletraps.
The official relations between the central government of the PRC and the island province were interrupted in 1949 after the Kuomintang forces, defeated in the civil war with the Chinese Communist Party headed by Chiang Kai-shek, moved to Taiwan. Business and informal contacts between Taiwan and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the parties have started to contact through non-governmental organizations – the Beijing Association for the Development of Relations through the Taiwan Strait and the Taipei Cross-Strait Exchange Foundation.
