Premier Yu Shyi-kun said on Thursday the only reason he referred to the nation as "Taiwan, ROC" in his speech to the Honduran Congress a day earlier is that he wants the nation's allies to understand that it's Taiwan funding many of their development projects, not China.
Yu spoke aboard a flight from Honduras to Nicaragua on his tour aimed at cementing diplomatic relations with allies in the Caribbean and Central America.
In the international community, Yu said, China usually means the People's Republic of China (PRC).
During the martial law era, Yu said, the Taiwan government insisted that it was the sole legitimate government of all China.
As a result, Yu said, Taiwan's diplomatic allies continue to uphold this concept.
"And this was why pass cards dispatched to my motorcade during my visit to the Dominican Republic last week bore the term `China, Taiwan,'" Yu said. He added that former Dominican Republic President Rafael Mejia used to call the Taiwan ambassador to the Caribbean nation, John Feng (
Noting that Taiwan's diplomatic allies have traditionally used "China" as the abbreviated form of "Republic of China," Yu said their citizens tend to mistake Taiwan-funded infrastructure projects as being China-funded.
Yu said a Taiwan expatriate in Costa Rica once told him that most Costa Rican citizens think that the Taiwan Friendship Bridge in their country was donated by China.
"Many fruits and vegetables produced by our agricultural technical missions in Central American countries have also been mistaken for those grown by China," Yu said.
Against this backdrop, Yu said he decided to refer to the Republic of China as "Taiwan, ROC" to distinguish it from China, which is also known as the PRC.
Yu and his entourage arrived in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua on Thursday evening on the last leg of a three-country tour.
Yu was accorded a red-carpet welcome with full military honors upon his arrival at Managua International Airport.
ROC Ambassador to Nicaragua Tsai Teh-san, senior officials from the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry and representatives of the Taiwanese community greeted Yu's entourage.
Scores of Nicaraguan schoolchildren studying at the ROC Elementary School in Managua and winners of a beauty pageant for ethnic Chinese in six Central American countries also welcomed the delegation.
Shortly after his arrival, Yu attended the opening of an annual meeting of Taiwan expatriates from Central American nations.
Yu will meet with senior Nicaraguan officials to discuss boosting bilateral cooperation in various fields. He will also inaugurate free trade agreement negotiations with Nicaragua.
This is Yu's second overseas trip since assuming the premiership in February 2002. On his way back to Taipei, Yu will make a three-day transit stop in New York, where he will meet with US political figures, think tank scholars and Taiwan expatriates.
Members of Yu's entourage include Government Information Office (GIO) Director-General Lin Chia-lung (
GIO chief Lin said Wednesday that the new abbreviation will be standardized so that the nation's diplomats can easily use it in their day-to-day diplomatic engagements and publicity campaigns.
"If we just refer to our country as Taiwan, the designation cannot highlight Taiwan," Lin said.
He said that the international posters and advertisements to be released late this month to solicit support for Taiwan's bid to join the UN will bear the term "Today's Taiwan ROC."
Stressing that the Republic of China remains Taiwan's formal national title, Lin said all of the government's official documents will continue to carry this title. As for international publicity materials, Lin said "Taiwan" will be the most favored designation.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,