Opinion | JPMorgan may be on slippery slope over Taiwan name game

JPMorgan Chase became the latest major corporation to kowtow to Beijing’s “namefare” campaign over Taiwan, instructing some of its employees to refer to “Taiwan, China” instead of referring to self-governed Taiwan as a separate country.

In a recent email from Stuart Marston, a supervisory analyst global manager for the mega bank, certain employees were instructed to refrain from referring to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan as separate countries, according to Bloomberg News.

JPMorgan Chase is not the only major corporation to be forced by Beijing to censor, or self-censor, any political views concerning Taiwan’s de facto independence as a condition for doing business with China. In recent years, global brands such as Calvin Klein, Coach, Delta, The Gap, Givenchy, Marriott, Swarovski, Versace and Zara have been forced to apologise for referring to Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan as separate countries on their websites or T-shirts they sell and have changed these designations.

For JPMorgan, the trade was purely profit-driven – swapping any country references to Taiwan for a piece of China’s US$20 trillion in investible financial assets, which have largely remained off-limits to foreign competition.

The firm is the only American financial institution so far to have been approved to take a majority stake in an onshore Chinese securities joint venture, China International Fund Management, and JPMorgan is also considering the establishment of a private bank in China.

Yet JPMorgan must also consider its operations in Taiwan, where the bank has been active since 1970, becoming the first international asset management firm and managing Taiwan’s first 11 foreign investment vehicles. While its website now refers to its operations on the island as “Taiwan, China”, potential employees are still recruited to Taiwan under “Jobs in the Country Taiwan”.