Mr. Tsung-Yi Yu,

First, I would like to express my sincere sympathy for all those affected by the earthquake in Taiwan today. My thoughts are with them and with the first responders handling this crisis.

Now, to your message, thank you for reaching out and for suggesting ways to address this sensitive topic. As the RIPE NCC is a neutral organisation, determining the status of nations or their names is out of our scope. For the purpose of assigning a country code to a resource holder (1), we use the ISO 3166-1 list, which is the international standard. These codes are assigned by the ISO 3166-1 Maintenance Agency based on the UN identifier chosen by the UN Statistics Division. 

Under ISO 3166-1 (2), Taiwan is listed as "TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA," with the country code TW, which is reflected on our website in the List of Country Codes and RIRs (3). We do not use the ISO 3166-2 codes, which have more specific information about country subdivisions, such as provinces or states, which is not relevant to our purposes. As to your suggestion that we use the term “economy” when referring to Taiwan, we appreciate the usefulness of this term in the APNIC region. However, we do not want to start deviating from the ISO, as this would cause other inconsistencies in our data.

You mention a need to consider both accuracy and respect. I fully agree with you on the importance of these principles. This is precisely why we do not get involved in geopolitical disputes by selecting one person’s preferred terminology over another’s. Instead, we show our members equal respect by relying on internationally defined standards. Any disagreements over these standards should take place in the fora that create them, like the UN. Furthermore, these international standards keep registration information consistent across nations and organisations. This is what makes it possible for us to uphold the accuracy of our database and other services. 

I hope that this has helped explain why we operate this way, as we accommodate members from 76 countries in a service region experiencing several active conflicts. Please let us know if you would like more information about the ISO standards and how we use them.

Sincerely,

Hans Petter Holen

Managing Director and CEO

RIPE NCC

References:

1) https://labs.ripe.net/author/kjerstin-burdiek/country-codes-in-the-ripe-database/
2) https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:TW
3) https://www.ripe.net/membership/member-support/list-of-members/list-of-country-codes-and-rirs/