Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong

It's not nonsense, and "everybody knows Taiwan is a distinct country" is a flawed statement. The UN does not recognize Taiwan. Taiwan is recognized as a sovereignty by 19 UN member states. It has formal diplomatic relationships with ~50 UN member states. UN has 193 member states in total. Please refrain from using subjective unprovable ideology to represent the mass.

The UN is a political organization and, importantly, highly leveraged by China for political gain. The objective reality is that Taiwan is an independent country that sets its own laws and is free to conduct its own foreign relations.

The objectivity in your eyes is subjectivity to another. Similarly objectivity in others is subjective in yours. There is never true objectivity in our collective presence. If UN ceases to be your objectivity, that's respected.

I mean, you can take a plane to Taipei. It isn't subjective or unprovable: the ROC will check your passport. They issue the currency you will use to buy food. The police work for them. Taxes are collected, exclusively, by them.

The objective reality is that most of the world, including the United States, does not actually recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country. It recognizes that it exists as... Something.

I think you would be hard-pressed to argue that the Department of State, and its counterparts in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Brazil, Japan[1], etc, etc, etc, have been 'highly leveraged by China for political gain'.

Oh, and to throw another monkey wrench in your argument, consider that both China and Taiwan believe that Taiwan is not an independent country, but that it is part of China.

What they disagree on is who is the legitimate government of China.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-China_policy

>I mean, you can take a plane to Taipei. It isn't subjective or unprovable: the ROC will check your passport. They issue the currency you will use to buy food. The police work for them. Taxes are collected, exclusively, by them.

The question of whether or not ISIS is therefore a country is left as an exercise for the reader.

Countries that don't recognize Taiwan, the US included, do so solely because the GDP of China is much greater than the GDP of Taiwan and China is more than willing to throw their weight around in an attempt to legitimize their claim through coercion. If you hold a gun to someone's head and/or give them $100 and tell them to repeat that you are a cabbage, you don't become the cabbage, no matter how much of the world you coerce.

Both governments make claims against the other's land but that doesn't make them the same government.

You are technically right in that most states recognize Taiwan as a province of the PRC. However, describing Taiwan as a distinct country is ambiguous, since "country" doesn't have a strict definition. E.g., it's normal to consider the parts of the UK, the Netherlands, and Denmark to be countries, although they are not independent. It's not much of a stretch to consider Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan, or Catalonia, to be countries too.

Edit: if you look at the font in question, it does have flags for England and Aruba, for example, so offering the flags doesn't imply that you are recognizing the places as sovereign states.

They were a country for a period of time. They had passports and a currency. I don’t see how that disproves OP’s point

It would be a better exercise to define a sovereign state first and then independently apply the test to Taiwan and IS. History is full of unpleasant governments.

I do all sorts of things, because people who have physical, or economic power over me compel me to. Just because their authority is enforced through force (Or the implicit threat of force) (Or the promise of rewards for compliance) does not mean that they are illegitimate authorities.

Compelling other people to do things, with either a carrot, or a stick, is an incredibly normal state of affairs in life. My landlord will have me out on my ass if I don't cut him a check on the first of every month - does that mean that my recognition of his authority to my apartment is illegitimate, or somehow coercive?

coun·try /ˈkəntrē/ noun 1. a nation with its own government, occupying a particular territory.

Does the Peoples Republic of China currently occupy and govern the island of Taiwan?

1. I'm not sure how this has anything to do with your claim that PROC is improperly coercing the world into saying that black is white, by putting a gun to their heads. (And I still don't understand how it squares with the reality that the ROC is trying its best to do the same thing.)

2. Is Taiwan a distinct nation, or is it part of the Chinese Nation?

Both the PROC and the ROC currently seem to think that it is the latter. Most of the world agrees with them.

(Bonus points: Is Catalonia a country? What about Cascadia? What about Transnistria, and South Ossetia? What about Crimea? By your definition, it seems to quite clearly be part of Russia... Be careful where you express that viewpoint, though, it's not one shared by most of the world's governments, or most Ukranians...)

The UN was founded in 1945. I have reason to believe that countries existed long before that.

You can think of it this way. If the PRC were to say, "oh, by-the-way, feel free to recognize Taiwan as an independent country", every other country in the world would likely do so.

> Department of State, and its counterparts in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Brazil and Japan

Anyone in these departments of state is aware that Taiwan is a separate country. They’re just not able to say it.

In regards to 1. I’m a bit confused. Are you claiming China is landlord to the entire world?

Or that if they were, coercing all the population to say white is black would be the normal state of affairs?

I assume they were, but since most of the world was intent on squashing the country flat as a bug I doubt formal recognition would have done anything for them.

The parts of the Netherlands are called provinces, and are not sovereign nations.

The larger area you call the Netherlands that includes Belgium and Luxembourg is currently called the Benelux[1]

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benelux

I was thinking of the Kingdom of the Netherlands with its constituent countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_the_Netherlands

Why wouldn't everybody recognize it as a country and declare it a war?

Ah, my apologies. I’ve never heard ‘the Netherlands’ used to refer to the kingdom without actually specifying that part.

(And a few times to the 1700’s ish low countries, hence my confusion)

The US has "acknowledged" the "One China" position of both sides of the Strait since the 1970s, but it has never supported the notion that Taiwan (and Kinmen, Taiping, etc.) is PRC territory or that the mainland is ROC territory. "China" is not a nationstate. There's only the ROC (1912) and PRC (1949).