Asia's 'Passport Wars'

Asia’s Passport Wars: Chinese Map Triggers Diplomatic Firestorm -- Time

As anybody who travels with personal documents from countries like India or China or Vietnam will tell you, an Asian passport can be a miserable thing. It means having to steel yourself through weeks, if not months, of visa-application processes that can be both interminable and humiliating. It means being forced to wait for special screening at the borders of prosperous Western nations, just by circumstance of birth and bureaucracy. It means feeling forever a second-class citizen of a world that is supposed to be growing ever more interdependent and intertwined.

But, if it wasn’t enough of an albatross, the Asian passport has become something else altogether more absurd: a crude weapon of geopolitics. In the past week, neighboring governments reacted with anger after Beijing rolled out a new iteration of Chinese passports. The Indian Foreign Minister deemed it “unacceptable.” A Vietnamese official, speaking to the Financial Times, described it as “one very poisonous step by Beijing among their thousands of malevolent actions.”

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More News On The Uproar Over China's New Passports

Philippines, Vietnam Refuse to Stamp New Chinese Passport -- Voice of America
Philippines will not stamp visa in new Chinese passport because map image claims disputed seas -- Washington Post
India says China's new passport maps unacceptable -- CBS/AP
Indian Ambassador Downplays Chinese Passports Map -- US News and World Report
US to raise concerns with China over passport map that has angered Asian neighbors -- Washington Post
China Seeks to Calm Anger Over Passports -- Wall Street Journal
Why China’s new passports have infuriated most of its neighbours -- Araminta Wordsworth, National Post
Here’s the Chinese passport map that’s infuriating much of Asia -- Washington Post