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December 14, 2021

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鈥楥olored鈥 map riles Washington

A VIDEO feed of a Taiwan “minister” was cut during US President Joe Biden’s Summit for Democracy last week after a map in her slide presentation showed Taiwan in a different color to China’s mainland.

Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that Friday’s slide show by Taiwanese “digital minister” Audrey Tang caused consternation among US officials after the map appeared in her video feed for a minute.

The sources, who did not want to be identified, said the video feed showing Tang was cut during a panel discussion and replaced with audio only — at the behest of the White House.

The White House was concerned that differentiating Taiwan and China’s mainland on a map in a US-hosted conference could be seen as being at odds with Washington’s “one-China” policy, the sources said.

The State Department said “confusion” over screen-sharing resulted in Tang’s video feed being dropped, calling it “an honest mistake.”

Tang’s presentation included a color-coded map from South African NGO CIVICUS, ranking the world by openness on civil rights.

Most of Asia was shown, with Taiwan island colored green, making it the only regional entity portrayed as “open,” while all the others were labeled as being “closed,” “repressed,” “obstructed” or “narrowed.”

When the moderator returned to Tang a few minutes later, there was no video of her, just audio, and a screenshot captioned: “Minister Audrey Tang Taiwan.” An onscreen disclaimer later declared: “Any opinions expressed by individuals on this panel are those of the individual, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States government.”

One source said the map generated an instant e-mail flurry among US officials and the White House National Security Council angrily contacted the State Department, concerned it appeared to show Taiwan as a distinct country.

Washington complained to the island’s authorities, which in turn was angry that Tang’s video had been cut. The source said the NSC was angry as the slide had not appeared in “dry-run” versions of the presentation before the summit, raising questions as to whether there was intentional messaging by Tang and Taiwan.

“They choked,” the source said of the White House reaction.

A second source directly involved in the summit said the video booth operator acted on White House instructions. “It was clearly policy concerns,” the source said.

Under US government maps, showing sovereignty by color, require Taiwan to be shown with the same color as China’s mainland.


 

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