Shortly before the inauguration of the panda-the plant received a chinese delegation to the Copenhagen Zoo to remove Taiwan from the world map.
It shows the documents, Radio24syv has been given access to, and the progress is confirmed by the Copenhagen Zoo.
the Copenhagen Zoo had for the visitors guests originally made a map of the pandaernes distribution in nature, where the China was marked with a green color, while Taiwan was marked with white.
the Relationship between China and Taiwan has for years been tense and conflictual, because Taiwan sees itself on an independent state, while China regards Taiwan as a chinese province.
However, the zoo’s map of the world, where China and Taiwan emerged as different states fell a chinese delegation of officials and experts of the chest in march 2019.
the Delegation was on a visit in Copenhagen from the 24.-27. march to inspect the panda plant, and among the 20 corrections, as the delegation to the plant, was the world map, one of the things that should be addressed before the inauguration.
– Maps of China and the rest of the world by the panda system is flawed, wrote the delegation, the 30.march to the Copenhagen Zoo, and the Zoo confirms the opposite Radio24syv, that the problem was the selection of Taiwan.
– the Chinese made us aware that they consider Taiwan as part of China, informs the Zoo, which also consulted with the Ministry of foreign affairs in the case, which stated that Denmark does not recognise Taiwan as an independent nation.
the Copenhagen Zoo chose, however, a completely different solution, and zoomed in on the chinese mainland, and thus shown in Taiwan not on the map, which today hangs at the panda facility. See the photo below.
Photo credit: Copenhagen Zoo
– this way we can avoid to take the position of neither the one or the other way, inform the Copenhagen Zoo scientific director, Bengt Holst, explains:
– We knew that whatever we did with such a map, we would come to encounter any kind of policy, and we are not interested in, so we made a completely different card to avoid the debate says Bengt Holst to Radio24syv.
the Case shows how keen the chinese regime is in fact to point out, to Taiwan after the chinese view belongs to China.
– the Chinese are extremely keen to capture the kind of ‘geographical misconceptions’. The majority of the examples of China’s more assertive behavior and indflydelsesaktiviteter recent years – also in Denmark – is precisely to counter any sort of challenge, directly or indirectly, of China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, says Andreas Bend Forsby, as a scholar of chinese foreign policy at the Nordic Institute of asian studies.
According to Mette Thunø, associate professor of media studies at the University of Aarhus, reflect the course with the Copenhagen Zoo to the stronger exchange rate regime in China has placed in recent years.
”It reflects the situation we have had since 2018, where the man from Beijing page look a somewhat more firm compared to that China has sent messages to point out their views on the error in map where Taiwan stands as a sovereign state,” says dean Thunø.
the Ministry of foreign affairs has not wished to comment on the matter.
