[Bpost writes Taiwan as Province of China](https://preview.redd.it/apkyp9okdgx81.png?width=888&format=png&auto=webp&s=193bc8beded61fc18df9c82982762615915b25dc)

I can’t believe what I just saw on Bpost website. Bpost wrote Taiwan as “Province of China” when I tracked my package! 🤯 I filed a complaint to Bpost immediately but I am still very shocked and feel offended. I am sure Bpost has violated some sorts of laws or Belgian consensus as my nationality, on the residency card, clearly says that I am from Taiwan.

Strangely, the line “Province of China” only appears on the English website. When I checked from French and Dutch versions, they only show Taiwan. So I could not help but came up with some weird ideas that maybe, someone works in Bpost that only understands English, secretly made this move? As the world knows, China never allows others to call Taiwan as a country and many Chinese people under its propaganda firmly believe so. I don’t know what you think about it, but I think this vicious move from Bpost should be dealt properly because it could also imply that there’s something wrong inside the system and could do harm to the Belgian values. (For example [this source on Chinese spy](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-000844_EN.html))

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[It shows Taiwan on French and Dutch websites ](https://preview.redd.it/ctfu9cxp6hx81.jpg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f49c091214cadced3a170d3efaf22c9664abb369)

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[my complaints to Bpost](https://preview.redd.it/qc9i1lkqdgx81.png?width=1304&format=png&auto=webp&s=b585fdfa7ff9719445a9b767900b9c8241fb476e)

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Also, if you know to where can I report this issue, please let me know. I am really upset with this and want to change it. Thank you and have a nice day.

29 comments

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan,_China#The_United_Nations_and_the_ISO

    So, giving the benefit of the doubt, probably just laziness/ignorance/database artifacts.

    For complaints, https://www.bpost.be/en/faqs, contact [Office of the Ombudsman for the Postal Sector](https://www.ombudspost.be/en/) (or their Facebook/Twitter/…).

    BTW:

    * https://bugs.launchpad.net/developer-ubuntu-com/+bug/885293

    * https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/170143/taiwan-is-not-a-province-of-china

    * https://www.reddit.com/r/taiwan/comments/iyx146/my_way_around_taiwan_province_of_china_on_one/

    * https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=113308

    * https://forum.pkp.sfu.ca/t/taiwan-province-of-china/59805

  3. You could flag the issue with the federal ombudsman (see [https://www.federaalombudsman.be/en](https://www.federaalombudsman.be/en) ) since Bpost is a state-owned business. You could also raise the question with your consul or embassy (not sure how this works for Taiwan, I think it might be your permanent representative? [https://www.roc-taiwan.org/be_en/index.html](https://www.roc-taiwan.org/be_en/index.html) )

    Bpost might be forced to use the “province of China” wording for practical reasons (perhaps on the basis of international postage rules?) or might be toeing a fine line for international diplomatic relations (officially speaking, a lot of countries pay lip service to the “one China” policy).

    EDIT: you might also write to the minister who oversees BPost: [https://www.belgium.be/nl/over_belgie/overheid/federale_overheid/federale_regering/samenstelling_regering/index_petra_de_sutter](https://www.belgium.be/nl/over_belgie/overheid/federale_overheid/federale_regering/samenstelling_regering/index_petra_de_sutter)

  9. First of all, the package is not being delivered to your nationality. It’s delivered to a geographic location. They are not changing your nationality, claiming so is absurd.

    Besides that, IT systems tend to use some list of countries to translate the destination country into English for example. As others have said, this is the way Taiwan is named in the ISO list, which is probably how this got up there. If you have an issue with bpost following international standards organizations, you should point your anger towards those organizations.

  10. This is indeed sad, but be aware that because of the one China principle China does not trade with people who have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The country has to choose with whom they want to have diplomatic relations. For this reason Belgium has not acknowledged the independence of Taiwan (yet).

    Source: [https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan#:~:text=Op%20basis%20van%20het%20%C3%A9%C3%A9n,de%20regering%20in%20Taipei%20niet](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan#:~:text=Op%20basis%20van%20het%20%C3%A9%C3%A9n,de%20regering%20in%20Taipei%20niet).

  11. I work in logistics. Sometimes the goods I ship need a “Certificate of Origin”, which as the name says is an official document indicating where these goods were made. I need to make this document on the official website of the Kamer van Koophandel, an official government agency. The list from which I need to select the countries also mentions “Taiwan, Province of China” and it annoys so much. I can’t believe our government just gives in to this bullshit. But I guess China otherwise won’t accept the Certificates, and then the economy suffers. Or something like that 🤷

  13. Our official government position is that Taiwan is a rebellious province of China.

    We don’t recognize it as an independent country.

  14. Have you ever heard of Hanlon’s razor?

    I’m a software engineer and can confidently tell you the programmers that make these apps do not know what text will be shown in that location. Proven by the fact it is not the same in other languages. My most educated guess is one of the programmers or analysts chose an external source for the list of country name labels for English. Quite sure nobody at BPost really cared about what any country would be named, just that they’d have an up-to-date list of country names that they can reference from their code.

    Source: I’m a software engineer for a government organization.

  18. Also noticed this recently importing some tea from Taiwan.

    For once BPost is not at fault here, they’re really just following international standards.

  19. > I am still very shocked and feel offended

    Oh no, poor thing ;( Life must be so difficult.

  20. >I am sure Bpost has violated some sorts of laws

    Good thing you know the law… Except as others have already said Belgium does not recognize Taiwan as a seperate country.

    So unfortunately for you and your offended feelings, “Taiwan, province of China” is correct.

    Now I must say, as a nationalist myself, that I do respect you and your kinsmens plight for independence.

    But the current situation being as it is, implore you not to simply withdraw into a victim role and to start crying wolf, and especially not to direct your anger and fervor towards the Chinese authorities instead of our simple Belgian postal service workers.

  21. Great spot, particularly when it comes to the different descriptions of Taiwan in English (“Province of China”) and Dutch, French (no such designation).

    I do not think there is any malice from BPost at play here, neither is there some undue Chinese influence that must be investigated. Rather, I think, this distinction can be attributed to the prevalence of the description of “Taiwan, Province of China” within the English-language literature, international practices, etc.

    Sure, China is vehemently promoting the usage of this framing and it is particularly sensitive when countries, companies, and international organisations fails to do so. That this framing is now so readily accepted as fact, though not in controversially so, points to the successful nature of this unrelenting campaign.

    It may be interesting to see how regulations within the Universal Postal Union stipulate Taiwan’s status; and the extent to which China insisted on this particular framing.

    Could a solution be for the international postal system to treat Taiwan as its separate customs territory (as I think the WTO does)?

    All of this comes down to that dreaded One China Principle that the PR China promotes, particularly in light of its ambition to annex the Taiwanese islands. It must be said, however, that the diplomatic recognition, or acknowledgement, by Western governments under the One China Policy is entirely different.

  24. Probably because bpost has big contracts with various chinese postal services. They dont want to lose that.

  25. i don’t know a lot about that but my guess is diplolatic reasons, most of our stuff comes from china not Taiwan

  27. I don’t imagine seeing them do it on purpose or doing it to offend people. They probably just use predefined datasets to autogenerate the locations. Why does it differ from languages? Probably because the dutch dataset recognizes it as such.

  28. België erkend officieel China en heeft er diplomatieke relaties mee, dit betekent ook meteen dat het Taiwan niet erkent.
    Misschien vreemd om het er zo te zien staan, maar officieel volgt België deze lijn ook.

  29. You have hurt the feelings of the people of Tai… China

    This is sad. But I’m not sure that it is a “mistake”.

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