Can't see this emoji 🇹🇼 on macOS

I just found I can't see this emoji 🇹🇼 (Flag of ROC — Republic of China, Taiwan), which is rendered as a cross in a box, on my mac with macOS 10.13.5.

I bought my Mac in China, but my language regional preferences are all set to the U.S. Is there any way to make this emoji visible again?

Here is a screen capture of how this is displayed on my computer:

Probably connected to where you bought the machine. From Emojipedia:

The flag for Taiwan, which may show as the letters TW on some platforms.

This flag is hidden from the emoji keyboard on iOS devices where the region is set to china. Chinese iPhones won't display this flag and will instead show a missing character tofu (□).

The emoji of the flag of R.O.China will not be shown if either of the following is true:

• The device (Mac or iOS device) is bought from mainland China, determined by hardware serial number
• The "Region" setting is set to China

The People's Republic of China doesn't allow the Republic of China flag to be displayed, so the only effective way to show the flag correctly is buying the device from other countries (or Hong Kong).

EDIT 1

After confirming with Apple Store Genius in mainland China (P.R.C), this is completely depended on the hardware serial number.

The confirmed affected products include

1. macOS

2. iOS

If the hardware serial number is registered in P.R.C (normally all devices purchased from mainland China), the flag won't be shown no matter how you change the Region in Setting.

However, devices purchased from all the other regions, including Hong Kong and Macau, the flag can be rendered if the Region in Setting is not set to China, but the flag will be a tofu if you set to China.

EDIT 2

I've contacted a friend live in mainland China, and did an experiment, the result is the same (all depends on hardware S/N), for our safety, some personal information has been covered.

Screenshots are removed since my friend has some concerns.

EDIT 3

A comment is asking about how to tell the country/region of hardware S/N.

I'm not sure how mac S/N work for this situation cause I couldn't find related information on my MBP (10.13.6 beta), however, there is a common way for iOS products.

Check About in Setting -> General, if the ending characters are CH/A in the Model section, then its S/N is highly possible registered in P.R.C.

1. TW (R.O.C) -> TA/A
2. USA -> LL/A

Here is the possible list from wiki https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Model_Regions

Try my script: https://gist.github.com/ushuz/4f8c2771b295330b23154acfc00795b3

It changes Country field in /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist to TW. 🇹🇼 Taiwan flag will be available as long as it's not CN.

It works both for 2014 MBP 13'' bought in China and 2018 MBP 13'' bought in HK.

My Mac is bought from mainland China. On macOS 11.3 (Big Sur), I can make macOS to show the R.O.C flag with 3 steps:

1. Modify /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist, set Country to TW (originally CN), as suggested by many existing answers. But it's not sufficient.

   sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist Country TW
   

2. Change Language & Region > Region to Taiwan (originally China mainland).

3. Reboot the machine.

Based on my tests, the 1st or the 2nd change alone won't succeed. I have to make both changes to show the flag.

You can solve the problem with the Taiwan emoji for Chinese Mac models with the following command:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist Country US