BEIJING — When a fresh batch of Panasonic mobile phones reached stores this month, Chinese customers were quick to notice a problem: The gadgets were programmed with overseas prefix codes, including one set to dial Taiwan — or, as the phones put it, "ROC."
That stands for "Republic of China." And in the People's Republic of China — which regards the self-ruling island of Taiwan as a rebellious province and itself as the genuine, one-and-only China — them's fighting words.
"Rogue mobile phones," concluded the official China Daily, which encouraged readers to return the devices promptly so Panasonic could "rewrite the name of Taiwan, which is an inalienable part of Chinese territory."
On the complex Asian political map, at the intersection of euphemism and nationalism, sits the island of Taiwan — flypaper of terminological prickliness, touchstone of a thousand arguments.
Ever since Mao Tse-tung's communists took power in 1949 and sent Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists retreating to Taiwan, the Chinese government has long insisted that the island belongs to the mainland. Beijing backs its claim not only with military threats but with tiny slights it deploys every chance it gets.
In October, when heads of state from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meet in Shanghai, a Taiwanese minister will be there — but its president won't. The reason? Beijing insists he's not the president of a sovereign nation. "Taiwan's organizations," it says, "may participate under the designation of Taipei, China or Taiwan, China."
"The language tells a story. It reflects the complexity in Chinese politics," said the University of Denver's Jonathan Adelman, author of "Symbolic War: The Chinese Use of Force."
"They want the psychological acknowledgment by Taipei that it is the younger brother and Beijing is the older brother," he said.
Such contortions have happened in many forums for a long time. In Webster's and other Western sources, Taiwan is defined as the "Republic of China." Yet at the Olympics, Taiwan has competed as "Chinese Taipei" since 1980; its athletes wear no national flags, and medal winners hear no Taiwanese anthem, only generic Olympic fanfare.
Panasonic has since promised to reprogram its offending phones but hasn't said what name it will use for Taiwan.
It isn't the first to run afoul of the China-Taiwan linguistic ballet.
Colin Powell, then the newly minted secretary of state, wandered astray in April when he called Taiwan the "Republic of China" during congressional testimony. Beijing took issue and was reassured that no foreign policy change was imminent.
This month, Beijing denounced a proposal by several countries to, as it said, "help Taiwan 'join' the United Nations." The mere suggestion, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue, "tramples on the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter" and is a maneuver to create two Chinas.
That is a big fear for Chinese governments, which for millennia have struggled to hold their disparate peoples together. Any linguistic reference implying Taiwan — or any other part of China, be it Tibet or the rebellious western region of Xinjiang — has any sort of independence is an absolute no-no.
So the People's Daily calls Taiwan's president "the leader of the Taiwan authorities" or "Taiwan's Chen Shui-bian." The phrase "Taiwan independence" is enveloped in quotation marks and followed by "fallacy" or "folly."
Some Chinese telephone directories have a "Taiwan province" page with a map, but no phone numbers. "Data," says the page, "is temporarily lacking." Last year, a Chinese man sued the Japanese electronics firm Canon Inc. over a CD-ROM that called Hong Kong and Taiwan countries. Canon apologized for a "serious editing error."
"The words may confuse outsiders, but to us they represent the continuing struggle for a proper solution or arrangement in dealing with Beijing," said Philip Yang, a political science professor at National Taiwan University who runs a Web site called Taiwansecurity.org. Still, he said, "It puts us at a disadvantage. People listen to Beijing."
They have to: China refuses diplomatic relations with countries aligned with Taiwan. What's more, few governments dare ignore Earth's most populous nation and its untapped markets, yet neither are those governments keen to alienate Taiwan's economic might and high-tech sector.
That leads to odd balancing acts: When the United States switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1978, it replaced its embassy on the island with a "nonprofit organization" — the "American Institute in Taiwan."
But while China's leaders robustly condemn anyone who hints at independence, they also can't afford to alienate those millions of potential economic and patriotic allies it calls "Taiwan compatriots" — those islanders who have invested tens of billions in mainland China, speak the same language and listen to the same pop songs.
"The new generation is starting to realize that you have to have a new tone, that it can't just be saber-rattling all the time," said Stephen J. Hood, a China expert at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania.
"That language time and time again, that the bad guys are just out to get them, it's not working anymore," he said. "They have to use the language of diplomacy as well."