Chi Cheng (紀政), known as the “Flying Antelope,” took the lead in launching a referendum petition to change the national team’s title from “Chinese Taipei” to “Taiwan” at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Frequently quoted in media coverage, Chi has said that at the three Olympics in which she participated, she represented “Formosa” — abbreviated as “TWN” — at the 1960 Rome Olympics, and Taiwan at the 1964 Tokyo Games and the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. She is now hoping that the nation’s athletes will be able to compete at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics under the name “Taiwan” rather than “Chinese Taipei.”
What Chi has not mentioned is how many meetings the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has held to resolve the cross-strait dispute over the right to represent China.
First they were about connecting each nation’s Olympic committee with its “de facto controlled athletic area.” The government of the Republic of China (ROC) naturally refused the name “Taiwan Olympic Committee.”
That was followed by a compromise allowing each nation to name its own committee, but the IOC retaining the right to determine the name of their Olympic representative delegation according to their de facto controlled athletic area. In other words, the ROC government first failed to keep the name “Chinese Olympic Committee” when it was asked to change to the “Taiwan Olympic Committee,” a proposal sternly rejected by the government of the time, which in turn strove for “the Republic of China Olympic Committee,” although its athletes had to compete under the name of the de facto controlled athletic area, which is Taiwan.
In 1971, the ROC lost the right to represent China at the UN, but the government did not fulfill its obligation to work to obtain a UN seat for “Taiwan” that the nation deserves.
In the 1970s, the situation on both sides of the Taiwan Strait saw drastic changes, and in 1979, the IOC adopted a resolution in favor of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) using the name “Chinese Olympic Committee” and the ROC was to use “the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee,” which does not refer to the nation’s official name and avoids mentioning the de facto controlled athletic area, instead naming the committee’s location, Taipei.
It should be noted that although the name is humiliating, membership has remained unchanged and it has not affected athletes’ right to participate in the Games, unlike the WHO, in which the nation is not even allowed to participate.
Many commentators have confused the “Chinese Taipei” of the Olympics with the one of the WHO, and have even conflated it with the name of China Airlines and other similar issues when they criticize the government for doing nothing. Such simplification of the issue and emotional venting does more harm than good.
The strenuous fighting over the ROC’s international recognition during the era of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) reveals the hidden logic behind international political realities. If the government and the public continue to hold divergent opinions regarding the rectification of the national team title at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, things will end badly. Taiwan does not have the international advantage it had during the Cold War, and the nation faces heavier pressure from the PRC than ever before.
The Democratic Progressive Party administration deserves praise for its refusal to acknowledge the so-called “1992 consensus,” and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also been more active than in the past in its response to China’s domineering pressure on the international stage to changing Taiwan’s name.
However, people could be forgiven for feeling that the government has not been sufficiently proactive and has not placed enough importance on the issue.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her administration should first tackle the achievable domestic name rectification issues to highlight the direction in which the government wants to move. Civic advocates should focus on goals and methods that are rational, such as the timing of a referendum and how it should be framed. Sanctifying the goal without considering its feasibility might lead to undesirable frustration and fracture, and this is the last thing people who really love Taiwan want to see.
Chen Yi-shen is an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Modern History.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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