The line needs to be drawn somewhere.
The English media guide for the Taipei Summer Universiade caused quite a stir on the Internet yesterday due to its use of phrases such as “Introducing our island — Chinese Taipei” and “Chinese Taipei is long and narrow.”
It is not just “very strange,” as Sports Administration Director-General Lin Te-fu (林德福) said in a Central News Agency article.
This is insane.
The name is not the issue — those who understand China’s political clout and bullying tendencies know that “Chinese Taipei” is a hated, but likely necessary, compromise for Taiwan to participate in international events.
It would be ideal for the nation to be able to participate in the Olympics one day as “Taiwan” — as it did in 1964 and 1968 — but as China becomes increasingly volatile and hostile to whatever is left of Taiwan’s international stature, while the rest of the world bows to its whims, this seems unlikely.
Most informed people know that “Chinese Taipei” is not the nation’s name and that nobody uses the term to refer to their own nation.
While reporting on last year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Western media outlets such as CNN simply used Taiwan instead of the nonexistent “Chinese Taipei” when referring to the nation’s athletes.
CNN reported on Aug. 6 last year that weightlifter “Hsu Shu-ching [許淑淨] became the first athlete from Taiwan to win gold at the Rio Olympics on Sunday.”
It makes sense: Hsu’s team might have been “Chinese Taipei,” but she is from Taiwan, not “Chinese Taipei.”
That name is a formality to get Taiwan into the Olympics and should be left at that — regardless of how fervently Beijing would disagree.
However, as the host country, Taiwan is referring to itself as “Chinese Taipei” in its own media guide.
Even those who do not agree that Taiwan is a sovereign state should agree that from a geographical standpoint, that “long and narrow” island is called Taiwan, or its former name of Formosa.
Nothing else.
Whoever wrote that passage was probably under considerable time pressure. The guide requires final approval from the International University Sports Federation, so the writer probably should not be blamed — it is just that this is a sorry situation to be in.
It is already unfortunate enough that we have to compete on our own turf using a name other than Taiwan.
This brings up more questions:
Will Universiade volunteers and staff have to tell visiting athletes: “I hope you enjoy your stay in Chinese Taipei”?
Is the city where the games are to take place called Taipei, Chinese Taipei?
When visitors leave Taipei and perhaps visit Taroko Gorge, would they still be in “Taipei”?
The situation is absurd.
This would have been a great opportunity for Taiwan, which would benefit from international exposure, to introduce itself and assert its uniqueness, as well as its distinction from China, to people who have only ever heard Beijing’s rhetoric — which often drowns out all other voices.
If the naming standards are the Universiade’s stance, there is nothing that can be done — on an official level, that is.
However, the public is not obliged to use the name “Chinese Taipei.”
With the influx of foreigners during the Universiade, let us do our part to welcome them to “Taiwan” while remembering to cheer for team Taiwan, no matter what the official name might be.
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
In the opening remarks of her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) framed her visit as a historic occasion. In his own remarks, Xi had also emphasized the history of the relationship between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Where they differed was that Cheng’s account, while flawed by its omissions, at least partially corresponded to reality. The meeting was certainly historic, albeit not in the way that Cheng and Xi were signaling, and not from the perspective
RSS