China refuses United Airlines' workaround to not list Taiwan as part Asian giant

The Chinese foreign ministry has heavily criticised what it claimed was an attempt by United Airlines to work around Beijing's request that foreign carriers list Taiwan as part of Chinese territory on their websites.

Earlier in 2018, officials in Beijing had instructed 44 foreign airlines to change their websites and list Taiwan as a part of China and not separately, together with Hong Kong and Macau.

In response, the White House was on record as having labelled it as 'Orwellian nonsense' and some American airlines had yet to comply with the edict.

United Airlines recently enabled a functionality that allowed customers to list their location by selecting the Taiwanese currency, a nod to Taiwan’s 'de-facto' independence, which had irked China.

"However flexible they may try to get, there's simply no way to sidestep the one-China principle," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing on Thursday. "There’s only one China in the world and Taiwan is part of China. This is the objective fact, common sense and international consensus."

As the trade war escalates, Taiwan is increasingly becoming a key point of friction between the two capitals with the US standing fast in not betraying the island’s de-facto independence.