China complains about Japan's soccer guide

Asian Economic News, August 9, 2004

BEIJING, Aug. 6 Kyodo

The Chinese Foreign Ministry lodged a complaint with the Japanese Embassy earlier this week over a soccer guide that apparently indicates Taiwan and China are separate countries, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Xinhua reported that Chinese journalists found out at a Monday press conference in Jinan, an Asian Cup venue in Shandong Province in eastern China, that a Japan Football Association guide marks China and Taiwan in different colors on a map in the guide. Xinhua calls the coding ''a mistake.''

''The Shandong provincial government and the Chinese organizing committee of the Asian Cup complained to Japan as soon as the error was noticed,'' Xinhua said.

''Officials from the Chinese Foreign Ministry also complained to the Japanese Embassy to China, urging Japan to correct the mistake and to eliminate 'negative influences.'''

China has seen Taiwan as a breakaway province since the end of the civil war in 1949, when the island broke away under the Communist Party's archrival Kuomintang. Chinese leaders say they will not rule out use of military force to make Taiwan reunify.

Japan agreed to recall the guides, Xinhua said, but a Japanese Embassy official declined to comment on the incident or the Foreign Ministry's complaint.

He said Japan's position on Taiwan had not changed.

The Japanese government backs Beijing's ''one-China'' policy.