Twenty-nine firms among world’s top 500 taken to task for ‘wrongly’ depicting China’s map

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(TibetanReview.net, Aug05’19) – China has launched a global purge of companies and other entities that do not fully reflect its view of its territory, including territories under its occupation rule and others claimed by it as supposedly belonging to it since ancient times. It has most recently told 29 of the world’s top 500 companies to “rectify” online maps that “incorrectly” portrayed China’s territory in the first half of 2019, according to the official globaltimes.cn Aug 4. The report did not name those companies.

The report cited the country’s Ministry of Natural Resources, which issued the order, as saying that it had also inspected maps used at conferences and exhibitions by official departments of the government of China in the first half of 2019. And even Chinese government entities were found to have depicted “incorrect” maps of China.

In this connection, the ministry has said problematic maps were found in online news items related to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, on websites related to the Belt and Road Initiative and the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations. It added that all the maps had been rectified.

The ministry has claimed that these maps “damage the unification of state sovereignty, territorial integrity and national interests”.

Aug 29 has been declared the national surveying and mapping day of China and a nationwide promotion will be launched during the month to provide knowledge on maps in schools, local communities and media, the ministry has said.

The report noted that in 2018, the ministry examined 8,546 maps and more than 500,000 images of maps. And it destroyed more than 290,000 incorrect maps which were printed in South China’s Guangdong Province East China’s Shandong Province. It bears pointing out that those maps were printed on business orders from overseas customers and not meant for use in China.

Also, in Mar 2019, Chinese customs authorities in Qingdao, Shandong, seized and destroyed 30,000 incorrect world maps, “with problems including rendering Taiwan as a country and the wrong depiction of the Sino-Indian border – the largest number to be disposed of recently,” the report added.

The report noted that ‘incorrect’ maps had also been seen in movies, TV series and publications and some foreign companies.

The report made the point that German carmaker Audi had apologized in 2017 for using an inaccurate China map at its annual press conference while Japanese electronics maker Kyocera had apologized in 2018 “for only showing half of China’s territory” on a map from its Chinese website.

The report said recent discussion on “problematic maps” had surfaced the week before after a popular TV drama Go Go Squid showed a map that “failed to identify the islands of Taiwan and Hainan Province, South Tibet and Aksai Chin as part of China.”

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