Google insults Taiwan by calling the country a Chinese province.

(Bali October 8 2005) Traveling to another part of the world always brings things into perspective. For instance: Asian newspapers are not that concerned about Europe or even the US for that matter.

But Google is everywhere.

One of the leaders of yesterday’s Asian Wall Street Journal looked into Google’s latest attempt to please the Chinese dictatorship. It appears that Google has decided to designate Taiwan as a “province of China” in its map section.

This has upset the Taiwanese government, as well as the pro-independence members of the Taiwanese parliament. The Taiwanese vice president is now asking for an apology from Google. Google is reviewing the issue.

The United Nations

According to the newspaper Google argues that it follows the lead of the United Nations.

It should be remembered, however, that when Nixon made peace with communist China, Taiwan (or the Republic of China as it is formally called) lost its seat in the UN to the People’s Republic of China (i.e. mainland China), meaning that the UN is not neutral in this case.

In Google’s defense, however, it could be said that Taiwan indeed is a province of China, and that the arguments used by both “Chinas” should lead to such a conclusion. According to Communist China, Taiwan is a renegade province, the last bastion for the anti-communist forces from the civil war.

However, the democratically elected Taiwanese government has also formally claimed to be the government of all of China, and seen from that perspective the island of Taiwan could be considered a province in a future democratic China.

The problem is, of course, that Taiwan for all practical purposes is an independent nation and that being designated as “a province of China” is being read as support to Communist China’s claim to Taiwan.

Chinese censorship

This reading is strengthened by Google’s policy of giving in to the demands of mainland China in order to get access to the huge Chinese market.

As John Battelle points out in his excellent book The Search. Google has been giving in to Chinese demands.

In 2002 the Chinese government started filtering out Google.com, as it gave Chinese searchers access to forbidden information. Battelle says:

“Google claimed that it was not forced to modify its service during the fracas – a claim that to this day, if true, makes it unique among the search engines.”

At this point a lot of Chinese, mainland or off shore, started to doubt Google’s willingness to stand up to the demands of the Chinese dictatorship.

Google News

Their doubts were strengthened two years later, when the communists started censoring the new Chinese language version of Google News.

Google started negotiating with the communist government, and decided to remove the offending news sources.

Google argued that including these sources in the search results would create a poor user experience. When clicking on the relevant link they would get an error message, courtesy of the Chinese government. However, as Battelle puts it:

“…that explanation rang hollow to many – and worse, it sidestepped the real issue: by working with China to omit certain sites, Google had seemingly become an accessory to evil. After all, isn’t it better to know that something exists, even if it is blocked, that not know about it at all?”

The real reason for Google’s choice was most likely access to the Chinese market. More or less at the same time as this controversy took place, Google had invested in the Chinese search engine Baidu, and Google needed Chinese approval. It is all about the money.

See no evil

Google’s company slogan is “Don’t be evil”. The headline of the Asian Wall Street Journal leader is “See no evil”.

It can actually be that the designation given to Taiwan in Google Maps is caused by a cultural and political blunder. Google is after all a company run by engineers, not social scientists.

Still, the damage is done. Google is loosing credibility in these parts of the world, and it is loosing it fast.

Taiwan Not Happy With Being A Chinese “Province” In Google Maps (SEW)
Taiwan’s province tag follows conventions, says Google (AsiaMedia)
Taiwan wants Google to apologize (Mercury News)