Starbucks Brews Hostility in Taiwan

Starbucks (SBUX) has inadvertently stirred up a long-standing controversy in Taiwan over what the country calls itself.  On the coffee company's store locator page, up until about a half hour ago, Taiwan was described as "a province of China."

That description is music to the ears of many Chinese officials who regard Taiwan as a renegade province. Yet, for the Taiwanese people, who don't consider themselves any part of the People's Republic of China, it's an affront. Since the 1949 civil war that forced nationalists out of the communist Chinese mainland and into Taiwan, the island has governed itself.

Today on Twitter, a user named Taiwan News, remarked, "#Starbucks abandons status quo, states 'Taiwan, Province of China' on corporate website." Starbucks tweeted back: "@taiwanews It was an accident and will be fixed as soon as possible."

Starbucks is not the first multinational company to fumble with the country's designation. Google (GOOG) did the same thing in 2005, when it labeled the island as a province of China on Google Maps. "It is incorrect to call Taiwan a province of China because we are not," a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry told the New York Times at the time. Not long after the controversy surfaced, Google changed the description to simply "Taiwan." Starbucks quietly did the same today. Chinese officials were not pleased when Google made the name switch years ago. They're likely to get heated again.