MOTC Planning "Counteractive Measures" Against China|中迫外航改我國名 交通部提反制

To defend Taiwan's sovereignty, after China asked 44 airlines to add "China" after "Taipei" on their websites, Taiwan's new transportation and communications minister, Wu Hong-mou, calls for counteractive actions, such as taking jet bridges away from these complying airlines. This however raised more concern, that it would harm Taiwanese citizens more than do any good.


China recently gave global airlines a deadline of July 25 for changing the listed country after "Taipei" to "China" on their websites. All of them complied. Taiwan's new transportation and communications minister, Wu Hong-mou, ordered government agencies to brainstorm counteractive measures during a ministry meeting last week. One of Wu's ideas was taking jet bridges away from airlines that complied. Another was giving these airlines bad landing and takeoff slots. Airlines that have not changed "Taiwan" to "China" on their websites, meanwhile, could be rewarded with lower landing fees.

The countermeasures target foreign airlines, but the majority of passengers on those flights are R.O.C. nationals. The actual people these countermeasures will hurt are Taiwan's 23 million people.

Kuomintang lawmakers point out only R.O.C. citizens would be hurt by these measures and are calling on China to stop its political machinations. One industry expert, meanwhile, says the Ministry of Transportation and Communications should respond to China's provocation but it needs to think about feasibility and practicality as not just any harebrained idea will do. Reassigning landing slots, for example, requires the approval of international regulatory bodies and can't be done unilaterally.

One situation that may arise is that airlines will be forced to use remote aprons. Do we even have enough remote aprons to go around? There are other issues as well. Do we have enough shuttle buses?

If takeoff and landing slots are changed, airlines will lose customers. Under these circumstances, airlines will rethink whether they still want to fly to Taiwan.

In response to the public outcry that the counteractive measures would only hurt R.O.C. nationals, the ministry released a statement saying Taiwan's sovereignty has been severely hurt by foreign airlines adding "China" after "Taipei." In addition, the Civil Aeronautics Administration already resent requests to all the airlines on Aug. 3 asking them to change the name back. The ministry also said all of its countermeasure ideas are still under discussion and it has not yet decided which path to take.