Informational Release - March 25, 2024
Update on the issue of China in POTA
After quite a few conversations, we are VERY HAPPY to announce that we have been able to re-enable China in the system.
We don’t want to go into too much detail on the process, but the important details came down to simple language barriers. Chinese is one of the more complex (common) languages, and neither party is a native speaker of the other party’s language. Using computer based translation isn’t always the most accurate, so there was some misunderstanding of the re-org concept plan and implementation.
We thank our volunteers for the many hours spent in Google Translate and Discord, working out the misunderstanding, and we are happy to be able to reactivate China so quickly!
Informational Release - March 14, 2024
Regarding recent data changes involving China and related territories
After our planned conversion of China and related territories to the ISO-3166-2 standard, our current Park Representative for China informed us that -
“the act of labeling the top level codes in the system is seen by the enthusiasts in our country as a violation of national sovereignty, and the enthusiasts have asked me to stop working on it and have asked me to inform you of the withdrawal of the POTA activities in the China region.”
In his words -
抱歉，我只能正式通知您中国地区退出POTA活动，请贵方将中国地区的公园标注为不可用状态，感谢您的信息，再见。
This is in regard to the fact that we have followed the ISO-3166-2 standard and set up the following Programs on their own:
- HK - Hong Kong
- MO - Macao
- TW - Taiwan
The ISO standard clearly states that these three codes are regions of China, but does grant them their own top-level code. The ISO standard actually includes a subdivision code under the CN top-level code as well, so the ISO standard in no way denies their status as part of China.
We have decided to use the top-level code from the ISO-3166-2 standard whenever present, even if/when a top-level code can also be designated as a subdivision under a different top-level code. This is the case here for China (3 instances), as well as in France (12 instances), Netherlands (6 instances), the United States (6 instances), Norway (1 instance), and Finland (1 instance). We are maintaining the same standard across all the Programs.
Unfortunately, even after a couple of hours of conversation, we were unable to come to an agreement that did not end up with a deviation from the top-level code standard.
Thus, the “China” Program, and all Parks therein, have been disabled.
We are saddened to announce this, and will look for any opportunity to include China in the future.