American, United Airlines, and Delta were among the last holdouts against a Chinese effort to force all airlines to drop any references to Taiwan as a separate country.
BEIJING — You can book a ticket to Taipei from New York on a major American airline. Just don’t ask them which country you are going to.
Bowing to pressure from China, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines began to remove references to Taiwan, of which Taipei is the capital city, as a separate country from their websites Wednesday.
American, which was the first to make the switch, listed Taipei Taoyuan International Airport, the city’s main airport, as a destination for travelers looking to book a flight on its website, with no reference to Taiwan. Delta listed only Taipei and the code for the city’s airports.
The American carriers were among the last holdouts against a Chinese effort to force all airlines to drop any references to Taiwan as a separate country. Beijing regards the self-ruled democratic island as a breakaway province.
While many major international carriers now designate Taiwan as a part of China, the American carriers stopped short of that step.
But changes to the websites were inconsistent on Wednesday: A user booking a ticket on Delta, for example, could not search for Taiwan as a destination but would have encountered the island’s name elsewhere in the process. The Chinese version of United’s website used the airport code TPE, for Taipei Taoyuan International, while the English version included TW, which is the country code for Taiwan.
Companies doing business in China often find themselves struggling to balance the demands of an increasingly nationalistic government against calls from rights groups and politicians that they should not give in to Beijing. The White House, for example, had described the Chinese website order as “ Orwellian nonsense.”
“We have another example of nonsovereign entities contorting themselves to satisfy Chinese pressure,” said Rupert Hammond-Chambers, the president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, a nonprofit organization that works to develop trade and business ties between the United States and Taiwan.
