British regulator to review Taiwan-China bird spat

TAIPEI - Britain's charity regulator said on Tuesday (Sept 29) it was investigating a British bird conservation group that cut ties with a Taiwanese counterpart because it refused to promise in writing not to use terms that represent the island as independent of China. China has increased pressure on international groups and companies to refer to democratically ruled Taiwan as part of China rather than simply as "Taiwan" - to the anger of Taiwan's government and many of its people. According to correspondence published last week, the Cambridge-based BirdLife International was concerned that Taiwan's Chinese Wild Bird Federation, since renamed the Taiwan Wild Bird Federation (TWBF), was bent on asserting Taiwan's formal independence, contravening the UN protocols that BirdLife adheres to. The TWBF for its part has said that, as an apolitical conservation group, it cannot sign any documents about Taiwan's political status. In an e-mailed statement, Britain's Charity Commission said BirdLife itself had submitted an incident report.

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