Fee Fi Fo Fum, Google thumbs its nose at Taiwan.

A recent but apparently short lived spat between the treacherous quislings and Google has ended with a whimper. TSU legislators and DPP appointed foreign ministry officials were most displeased with Google opting to list Taiwan as a province on their maps. The Peking Duck has his own take on the issue and linked to the following article from the Taipei Times (Amusingly its also reprinted in its entirety without attribution at the Worldnetdaily which has even claimed copyright over the article. Ad hoc plagiarism is not the least of the Worldnetdaily's myriad of problems but I digress.) outlining the complaints of certain malcontents.

The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) legislative caucus yesterday called on the public to write to Google to protest its listing of Taiwan as a "province of China" on its Google Maps service.

In addition to sending its own letter of protest to the US search-engine giant, the caucus asked the government to lodge a formal protest and request Google to clearly define Taiwan as "an independent state."

TSU caucus whip David Huang (黃適卓) said that Google Maps' definition of Taiwan as part of China was not only far-fetched but also unacceptable to the nation's people.

"Taiwan is an independent, sovereign state. Taiwan is not part of China," Huang said.

"Taiwan has never been ruled by China, nor has the Chinese government deployed any government functionaries or armed forces here," he said...

By listing Taiwan as a province of China, Google Maps is clearly succumbing to pressure from China to distort the international community's perception of the cross-strait situation, Huang said.

"It seriously sabotages the nation's sovereignty. The people of Taiwan should not allow China to spread such misleading information to the international community," Huang said.

Forgoeing for the moment the obvious factual errors the TSU legislator is shamelessly repeating the net effect of their protestations appears to be zero. Google is sticking to it's guns as Bloomberg notes.

Google Inc., the most-used Internet search engine, said its description of Taiwan as a province of China is consistent with international naming conventions such as those followed by the United Nations...

"We rely on international naming conventions to find a consistent policy,'' said Debbie Frost, a spokeswoman for the Mountain View, California-based company. Frost declined to comment on whether Google would consider changing the items.

To make matters worse is the fact that these Taiwanese legislators appear to be putting the cart before the horse. Instead of chideing google over the use of Taiwan province on their maps, it would perhaps be prudent for them to become more familiar with their own government and environs. Perhaps a visit to the website of the Taiwan Provincial Government would be edifying (They were considerate enough to even provide an English introduction as to their purpose). Or simpler yet, they can just look at the vehicular traffic on Taiwan's roads and take note of the license plates that read Taiwan Province.