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Alliance roots for team's name change

A pro-independence group yesterday said it wants Taiwan's Olympic team to be called "Taiwan," rather than "Chinese Taipei."

The Alliance to Campaign for Rectifying the Name of Taiwan said it was launching a nationwide "fault-finding" campaign, beginning with such misnomers as "Chinese Taipei."

Alliance executive director Peter Wang (王獻極) urged the public to remind each other not to use "Chinese Taipei" when they refer to Taiwan's athletes and instead use the nation's real name.

Wang called a press conference yesterday to promote the alliance's goal. Among those supporting the campaign are Presidential Office national policy advisors Chuang Po-lin (莊柏林) and Chang Kuei-mu (張貴木), Taiwan Society North secretary-general Yang Chi-wen (楊其文) and Hsu Ming-fang (許明芳), chairman of the Taiwanese Association in New Zealand.

They agreed that the public and the media in particular should refer to the nation's Olympic team as "Taiwan." They said the Chinese teams should be called "China," rather than "the mainland."

When local media referred to the baseball game between "Chinese Taipei" and Japan as a "Sino-Japanese" battle, it created so much confusion that people mistakenly thought the game was going to be between China and Japan, Wang said.

Wang said that his alliance was by no means laying the blame for the confusion on the media, saying it only hoped that the nationwide "fault-finding" drive would bear fruit.

On July 18 the alliance called for the removal of the words "provincial" and "Taiwan Province" from the public vocabulary once and for all to "more effectively reflect the truth."

The alliance members said that "Taiwan Province" in effect ceased to exist on July 18, 1997, when the National Assembly passed a resolution freezing the operations of the Taiwan Provincial Government.
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