BEIJING — Tensions between Washington and Beijing have spilled into a new and unexpected battleground: the pull-down menus on airline websites, where customers click on departures and destinations.

After the White House on Saturday accused the Chinese government of “Orwellian nonsense” for ordering 36 airline companies to purge their websites of references to Macau, Taiwan and Hong Kong as separate countries, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs struck back on Sunday.

In effect, the ministry told foreign companies that obeying official Chinese demands on how to refer to these areas would be the price of doing business in China.

“No matter what the U.S. side says, nothing will alter the objective fact that there is only one China in the world, and that the Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan regions are inseparable parts of Chinese territory,” a spokesman, Geng Shuang, said on the ministry’s website.