National Geographic Society on Wednesday said that it would change the designation “China” on the Paracel Islands, after the Viet group Nguyen Thai Hoc Foundation protested it and started an online petition signed by more than 8100 people worldwide in a matter of just days.

The issue is National Geographic’s World Political Map, to the left above. It’s online here.

The map labels the Paracels with its Chinese name and annotates in red, “China.”

That did not sit well with red blooded Vietnamese, who had held the island until 1974 when the Chinese navy overran the Vietnamese garrison there and took the islands.

The group Nguyen Thai Hoc Foundation started an online petition calling for the removal of the “China” label. The petition was started on March 11 and by March 16 it already had 8100+ signatures.

The Bolsavik contacted the National Geographic Society during the weekend for Nguoi Viet Daily News, and on Monday its spokesperson, Communications Manager Cindy Beidel acknowledged that the society was aware of the petition and that it would respond soon – which it then did the next day.

Interestingly, on a different map, that of Asia, the National Geographic Society had a different legend. On there, the label says: “Administered by China (claimed by Vietnam).”

Ms. Beidel explained that the map of Asia is “a different map at a different scale, which allows for greater detail.”

On Tuesday, National Geographic issued a press release, explaining that the label currently used is apolitical and merely reflects the de facto reality on the ground.

Nonetheless, National Geographic acknowledged that “simply denoting the archipelago with the Chinese name and the word ‘China’ in parenthesis without further explanation can be misleading and misinterpreted.”

As a result, the society said that it would “either provide the additional explanation that is included on our other maps as described above, or … will omit any designation.”

In other words, in future editions – which may be a year or more away – the islands will no longer be labeled just “China.”

.

.

(By the way, remember the strange woman who threw a fit at the Westminster Vietnam War Memorial, here? It was at the commemoration of the 1974 battle over those islands.)