I know very little about Taiwan. My Friend Nunu who is a huge proponent of Taiwanese Independence knows a lot. And since you can’t really talk about Chinese Democracy and Independence without touching on Taiwan, Nunu has kindly offered (okay, I begged) to be our Taiwanese Correspondant. She after all flew back to Taiwan from Canada to vote in the first proper election. Here is her first installment.
Here’s the latest news on the visa issue from Taiwan.
Chinese government has made a list of terms that can be used as the Birthplace of Taiwanese immigrants, including
1) “Taipei”
2) “Taiwan”
3) “Taiwan, China”
4) “Chinese Taiwan”
5) “China Taiwan”
6) “China”
What’s definitely unacceptable will be
1) “Taipei, Taiwan”
2) “Taiwan ROC”
3) “ROC” (which stands for the Republic of China)
(because they all imply Taiwan being a COUNTRY rather than a part of China, and for Hong Kong immigrants, they can’t put “Hong Kong, Hong Kong” either for the same reason.)
As for the Country of Birth, no choice but to put “China” for all the immigrants from these two regions. Whoever applies for a visa to visit China holding Canadian passport will have to make appropriate corrections on their passport before a visa being issued.
On the news it also stated that the Canadian government had already requested all the passport issuing offices to use appropriate terms on these immigrants’ passport in order to “meet Chinese government ‘s demand”. Since when Chinese government even has the authority over Canada??? I’m going to send a request to the immigration office and ask if from now on they will automatically change all Taiwanese or Hong Kong immigrants’ Country of Birth into “China” regardless our wish. If that’s what’s gonna happen, I think I will never apply for Canadian citizenship and may well leave this country immediately. It’s an insult to us, and I even consider it as a violation of human right. Really furious !!!!!
*****
Canada Rejects China’s Request
I just found out that Canadian government didn’t accept China’s request to make any change on the passport. The spokesman of the foreign affair department seemed to make a statement yesterday regarding this issue (I still have to verify the news on the official site). They have decided that the birthplace by default will be “Hong Kong”, “Taiwan” and “Macao” for immigrants from these three regions, but we still can choose to put “Taipei, Taiwan”, “Hong Kong, Hong Kong” or any other combination that China has strongly protested against. As for the country of birth, we can decide to leave it blank or have it identical to the birthplace. The applicants of passport will only be informed of the inconvenience they may encounter in the future if they ever want to visit China, but Canadian government has no problem with whatever we want to put as birthplace or country. I would like to know how the other countries react to China’s request though, so far only Canada and Japan have made a statement on this topic (and for Japan it’s not even a problem at all because on their passport they don’t indicate Country of Birth).
Just curious if you read another news about the councillor of Tokyo (I don’t really know his title in English, in Japanese is “ª¾¨Æ”) saying that all the Chinese residents should leave their country because they are all potential criminals and they WILL commit crimes eventually. What a stupid statement! I know the discrimination against Chinese people is always high there, but now it’s getting even worse. Don’t know why though.
NuNu
(It’s true, I am seriously throlling my government to put me back on the “To Watch List of Possible Subverters” probably again. This time for thinking that Taiwan should be reconized on the world stage as an independent country and saying it out loud. I am not being completely funny, I have a friend who found herself followed everywhere during the United Nations Conference on Women held in Beijing 7 years ago. Things like that happens. And as to why I am saying “again”: China thinks sites like mine are “poisonous weeds” and how I got China.com banned in China)
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 