ANSWERED Taiwan server

[MichelAIR 1]

Hello.
In the eddie's list of countries, Taïwan is presented as "Province of China".
It is NOT. It is an independent democracy.
Please remove this piece of totalitarian propaganda. Thanks in advance.

[Staff 10014]

23 hours ago, MichelAIR said:

Hello.
In the eddie's list of countries, Taïwan is presented as "Province of China".
It is NOT. It is an independent democracy.
Please remove this piece of totalitarian propaganda. Thanks in advance.

Hello!

Taiwan is the main and biggest province of the Republic of China (ROC), not to be confused with People's Republic of China (PRC) aka mainland China. Taiwan is also the informal name of the Republic of China.

Get informed here first:
https://www.taiwan.gov.tw/

Although the Republic of China is officially recognized only by a few countries and not by the UN (due to the veto of the PRC) we list and we will list Republic of China as an independent country, as it is in practice, in real life of citizens and in spite of the imperialist goals of the PRC.

Probably you should send your protests to ISO, not to us: please read the next message for more details and check what we have done so far to recognize the Republic of China as an autonomous country and affirm that there is NOT only one China. Anyway ISO compliance break is on the table. Currently, the decision is that the next Eddie Desktop version will print "Taiwan, Republic of China". Eddie Android edition doesn't need modifications.

Kind regards
 

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

Maybe you both should calm down?

The official wording on the very website linked by Staff is actually Republic of China (Taiwan). You see it in the logo, you see it on the very first image on the About page. I'd like to inquire as to where Staff got the funny idea that it was Province of China, which is easily interpreted as "Taiwan, a province of People's Republic of China", which is the actual propaganda.

Of course, Taiwan the country has got a Taiwan Provice itself. But since we're looking at a list of countries, it makes no sense naming it "Taiwan, Provice of China". It's a very subtle way of devaluing the ROC – the country's name is Republic of China (Taiwan). Therefore I suggest changing the wording to what the website calls it.

[Staff 10014]

20 hours ago, OpenSourcerer said:

I'd like to inquire as to where Staff got the funny idea that it was Province of China,

@MichelAIR too.

Hello!

It's the ISO 3166 string extracted by Eddie as usual for any country.
 

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which is easily interpreted as "Taiwan, a province of People's Republic of China", which is the actual propaganda.

You can ask ISO to include ROC on ISO 3166 as a sovereign country, but it will not happen. ISO builds the list according to those countries that are either UN members, parties of the statute of the ICJ or members of a UN agency, but Republic of China can't enter the UN because of the PRC veto. To make things worse, almost all the countries in the world, including the USA and the EU Member States, with the exception of 12 countries with lesser power in the UN such as Belize and Haiti, do not recognize the Republic of China as an independent country because, we guess, they fear too much the economic sanctions PRC will enforce against those countries that would do so.

Our solution to list Taiwan as it was in ISO 3166 as a stand alone, recognized and independent country, with its own flag, its own place as a country in the servers list, its own country fully qualified domain name in the infrastructure, far from being funny should have told you everything.
 

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Therefore I suggest changing the wording to what the website calls it.

Building our own codes and strings by breaking ISO standard may become a bigger problem but we'll evaluate it (after all we already got out of ICANN for specific ICE-related "enforcement" more than a decade ago). The matter was already on the table as already announced in the "News" forum:
https://airvpn.org/forums/topic/63201-new-1-gbits-server-available-new-country-tw/?do=findComment&comment=238819
and Eddie's next version will print "Taiwan, Republic of China".

On one hand, by abiding to the ISO 3166 but moving ROC to an autonomous country as it has been in practice since decades we can keep using ISO standards (no technical complications, no exception handling and worse) but at the same time we show a clear political position and challenge PRC propaganda & mantra "there's only one China". The obvious strength of this position is the provocation to leave the ISO string and keeping ROC as an autonomous country, therefore claiming there there is NOT one China only and de-structuring the meaning of "Province of China".

On the other hand, breaking ISO standards and UN decisions may be very questionable but somehow stronger. Also, to avoid losing the strength of the aforementioned provocation we can find alternative strings such as "Republic of China" directly (claiming Taipei in "Republic of China" can cause again adverse reactions by ignorant people). This is the picked modification for the next Eddie version, at the moment.
 

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Maybe you both should calm down?

No problems. The fight of elderly AirVPN members against PRC censorship, propaganda and more is a quarter of century old, so being accused to align with PRC against ROC is obscenely provocative, but the replies are (self or not) moderated.

As far as it pertains to the initial reaction, it means that at least the provocation worked, although it was not fully understood in this case, and if it serves the purpose to push people to realize that it's the ISO (and the UN, secondarily) the one putting the string "Province of China" on the ISO 3166 doc, it's a good thing. Not to mention that it can also serve the purpose to make people question how come, how it's possible that one could become victim of PRC propaganda "there's only one China" when one is against PRC propaganda!

Kind regards
 

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

Nobody ever documented that you're pulling the country names from the ISO standard.
And no, it is not obvious. Most people don't even know the two-char country codes are part of a standard. (For my part, I didn't know that standard also defines the full names of countries.)
And no, one or two mentions of such a standard in random forums posts is not documentation.

The misunderstanding is further exacerbated by you calling out OP to RTFM (which was the website) while you apparently adhere to a completely different FM. In a way, you caused the confusion yourself by not stating outright that you're pulling it from the ISO standard – that part only got mentioned after I provided my color commentary, after I did RTFM you linked to and immediately called out a dissonance.

All in all, it were around 6042 totally avoidable keystrokes, including in this post. But we've found a way; thank you for your consideration, also in the name of OP.