Yesterday, when Mozilla Foundation announced Download Day 2008, the page had been set up to allow users to pledge to download Firefox 3 on the day that it is released. I moved my mouse over Taiwan and it read “Chinese Taipei“. Now, I usually have no particular opinion of Beijing’s One China policy, but when an open source software project takes a clear stance to favour a political policy, I just think it’s really distasteful. Of course, this has now been updated to the, erm… regional name, “Taiwan”. (Probably did so after receiving some complaints)

Political rant below, read at your own discretion.

I think the entire name of “Chinese Taipei” is plain sillyness. Did they have names of “Chinese Hong Kong” back in the day? or “Chinese Macau”? As far as I am concerned, both governments should just set aside their differences, figure out what is best for the economies first, and not go through with all this name calling non-sense.

There is a clear difference in economic strength and areas of specialization in trade between the two countries, so why not work together to find out how both can benefit from each other? Taiwan can sell the snazzy EEE PCs, China can sell their Burberry bags (I’m talking about the real stuff =P, they ARE made there too), and together, we have economic activity! Everyone will be better off with a new trading partner (meanwhile, housing markets continue to erode on the other side of the lake). In more serious terms, fix the trade imbalance in both countries, stabilize the two money markets, and increase GDP output (although this would probably not be very favourable for China).

It also doesn’t do any one any good if all that time is wasted with declaring sovereignty rights on each other or threatening each other with really big guns.