At Uclue we had a drop-down Countries list that showed "Taiwan Province of China". The country name came from the package software that we started with, but it was also consistent with the country name in the PayPal programming manuals so it may have originated there.

Anyway, Taiwanese people complained, so I changed it to simply say "Taiwan".

I think the description "Taiwan Province of China" must originate from some diplomatic/trade agreement between China and the West, because I see it popping up everywhere. Even the Athens Olympics described Taiwan as "Taiwan Province of China".

If they dont check the content, at least let other users object to it and set a threshold for dropping it. When it comes to Israel (I am Israeli, btw) almost every single town and city has that remark on it, be it true or not. Propoganda hard at work...

"Taiwan Province of China" is the official ISO country name for Taiwan. As such, it appears all over the Internet in country/region dropdown lists and Taiwanese people always complain about it.

I think the key here is that they don't own or claim to verify the content, so why should they respond to any complaints about it unless it goes against their terms?

Can I ask Google to remove web pages from their index that contain incorrect information? No. And I don't see how this is any different.

I'm guessing that "Taiwan Province of China" was chosen because you can read it two ways – as "Taiwan, Province of People's Republic of China" which suits the government of China, or as "Taiwan, Province of the Republic of China" which is correct historically and is even technically correct now.

In theory the alternative readings should satisfy both sides. In practice, I think the Taiwanese consider it to be a sellout.