Taipei Times: Could you tell us how this whole matter started, from the beginning?
Denny Hsu (
Last June, when the LCI's annual world convention took place in Indianapolis, International President Frank Moore had met with me and Taiwan Chapter 13's district governor-elect to formally inform us that the Chinese authority had decided to grant permission to the LCI to establish sub-organizations in China.
Foreseeing that membership names and flags would become an issue between us and China as the LCI starts its new clubs in China, it then arranged an informal meeting in Beijing in September for us and the Chinese representatives to negotiate.
That meeting was held at the office of China's Disabled Persons' Federation. During the meeting, three informal agreements were reached orally between the Chinese representatives and us.
They were, first, while the Taiwan chapter would keep our LCI District Number as the Multiple District 300, the decision for the Hong Kong and Macao chapters would be based on later discussion, or instead, they would adopt another number.
Second, both parties, in principle, would not adopt their respective countries' full names -- Republic of China and the People's Republic of China -- but would adopt a name different from the respective countries' full name, which could include a geographical or regional indicator plus part of the respective countries' names.
Thus, we had then agreed that the Taiwan chapter would consider accepting the name "China Taiwan" if the Chinese chapter were called "Mainland China."
And third, instead of using each other's respective national flags as LCI membership flags, both the Taiwan chapter and the China chapter would design new membership flags that represent their geographical regions, which would have to be mutually accepted by both parties.
Those were the three informal agreements that we had made; and we both agreed they would only be made official when we later reported the agreements to our respective government authorities and had their approval.
In addition, both parties had also agreed during the meeting that all issues discussed should be treated on the principles of equal, fair and mutual respect.
But we were informed in April by Moore that during the LCI's April board meeting, it had resolved to change our membership name to "China Taiwan," while the two new chapters in China would be called "China Guangdong" and "China Shenzhen."
We found the board's decision extremely unacceptable and unreasonable.
First, the LCI made the decision without seeking our consent and second, if the China chapters are allowed to use their geographical name -- "China" -- as their membership names, then the Taiwan chapter should also be allowed to use our geographical name -- "Taiwan" -- as our membership name.
By addressing the Taiwan chapter as "China Taiwan," the LCI is not placing us on equal and fair footing with China but relegating us as a part of China.
To express our discontent that we refuse to be addressed as "China Taiwan," I wrote a protest letter to LCI President Moore.
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