Sir
In your News Feature “Forward planning” (Nature 440, 987–989; 2006), you published a map of East Asia in which Taiwan and China are both coloured yellow, indicating that they comprise one country. Yet Taiwan and China have been governed separately since 1949, when the Chinese communists ousted the nationalists from the mainland in a civil war.
Since then, Taiwan (officially called the Republic of China) has undergone a complete process of democratization, while China (officially called the People's Republic of China) has continued under single-party communist rule. This is a reality that cannot be ignored. If a reporter from Nature needed to visit Taiwan on assignment, for example, he or she could not apply for a visa at the Chinese embassy.
I hope that in future Nature will take into account the fact that Taiwan and China are governed separately as two distinct countries.
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Nature 's long-standing policy is to abide by the United Nations' position on the status of Taiwan — Editor, Nature. Contributions to Correspondence may be submitted to corresnature.com. They should be no longer than 500 words, and ideally shorter. They should be signed by no more than three authors; preferably by one. Published contributions are edited.
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Chen, M. Speaking for Taiwan about colours, maps and politics. Nature 442, 132 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/442132d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/442132d
