China fines 7 - Eleven for showing Taiwan as independent nation

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China fines 7 - Eleven for showing Taiwan as independent nation

Beijing January 21 ANI Beijing fined the 7-Eleven retail chain for recognising Taiwan as an independent nation on its website.

According to reports, 7 i Holdings owned convenience store chain, 7 - Eleven, has been fined 150,000 yuan USD 23,500 by the Chinese authorities.

The two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades, despite the fact that they claim full sovereignty over Taiwan, a democracy of more than 24 million people located off the southeastern coast of mainland China.

Many popular corporations in China have removed any mention of Taiwan as a separate nation state from their websites, and on certain occasions even offered official apologies after depicting the Chinese map without including Taiwan as part of Chinese territory, according to Just Earth News.

It has been reported that companies like Gap, Daimler AG, United Continental Holdings, and ANA Holdings have backed down after depicting Taiwan as a separate nation.

According to Just Earth News, Gap Inc. had to apologize in May 2018 after they sold a T-shirt on their retail outlets with an incorrect map of China after social media users pointed out that certain Chinese-claimed territories, including south Tibet, the island of Taiwan and the South China SeaChina Sea, were omitted.

A fine and warning was issued to Seven&i Holdings in December last year as a result of a government-linked credit information website.

The report on the website showed how the company has not been able to describe certain South China SeaChina Sea islands by their Chinese names as well as the disputed Diaoyu islands, known as Senkaku in Japan, as reported by Just Earth News.

The report stated that the map shared by the company had errors in labeling borders along the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region.

Taiwan and its legitimacy is a sensitive territorial issue in China, as Beijing considers the province as a self-ruled democratic island which has been governed separately since 1949.