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A cafe in the New Zealand city of Auckland has received one-star reviews after displaying the Taiwanese flag in its menu, RNZ reported.

The flag was displayed next to an item called the "Taiwan sandwich", which is inspired by a sandwich that's typically eaten in Taiwan as a quick breakfast.

The menu features other themed sandwiches as well, such as a South Korean "Scramble drop" and Vietnamese banh mi. The South Korean and Vietnamese flags were similarly displayed on the menu next to the items as well.

Flags are considered political symbols that represent a country or a state, and China does not view the self-ruled island of Taiwan as a state on its own.

Back in November 2015, no flags were displayed at all in the historic meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and former Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou that took place in Singapore, unlike typical inter-state meetings.

Reviews made by new Google accounts

Jason Park, the owner of the cafe called Cosmo Coffee, said they received a one-star review on Google reviews where the reviewer said she was uncomfortable with the use of the Taiwanese flag, citing the "one China" principle as well.

The Chinese government's position under this policy is that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory and that the People's Republic of China (PRC) is the only legitimate government that represents the whole of China, despite the PRC never controlling Taiwan before.

Although Park has since gotten the review removed from Google, he reportedly received eight more one-star reviews that didn't include further details on what the reviewers found unsatisfactory with the cafe. The Google accounts were new as well.

A check on Google showed that most of these one-star reviews have been removed, with just a few remaining.

Park told RNZ that he was shocked to see the flood of one-star reviews as he had no intention of offending any of their customers.

The Taiwan Sandwich was included on their menu as he wanted to cater to their "multicultural customer range in Auckland", Park said.

"We simply googled Taiwan and added the flag that was shown. This did not have any relation to the perspective of 'one China', he added.

Nevertheless, despite the backlash, he said he will continue to keep the Taiwanese flag on the menu.

Something good might have come out from this episode however. A reviewer said he visited the cafe due to the coverage resulting from the "political spat", and found the place to be "quite unexpected.

And although he found the Taiwan sandwich to be too sweet for his taste, he said it was "special".

Not the first time

This is not the first time that the display of the Taiwanese flag had stirred backlash.

Netflix's official Facebook page was inundated by complaints from Chinese viewers when a promotional poster for Thai drama "Girl from Nowhere" had included emojis of both the Hong Kong and Taiwanese flags.

Viewers in China, where Netflix is only accessible via VPN, had felt that the display of the flags indicated that Hong Kong and Taiwan were separate entities from China, according to Global Times.

A new ad was subsequently released, but with the flag emojis removed.

Another key difference was that the Chinese characters for "thank you" were changed from the simplified version to traditional Chinese, which is still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

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Top image adapted Cosmo Coffee and Igor/Google