The US, which has been quiet as China forced international organizations and conference hosts to change the name of Taiwanese delegations, should be more balanced in its treatment of Beijing and Taipei, an academic said yesterday.
The US State Department said on Monday that President Chen Shui-bian's (
But the move actually has little effect, as China has altered Taiwan's status on various international occasions, said Lo Chih-cheng (
"China often asked hosts of international conferences to change the name of teams from Taiwan. It is an obvious attempt to change Taiwan's status, but the US has not cared much about this. We need to urge Washington to not apply a double standard to Taiwan and China," Lo said.
Negotiations with other countries regarding name changes to Taiwan's representative offices used to be an extremely low-key affair. After Chen publicly pledged to launch the policy, Beijing may use the opportunity to tell countries that accepting Taiwan's name-change proposal amounts to supporting Taiwanese independence, Lo said in an interview.
After the US voiced opposition to Chen's name-change plan, senior officials of the Presidential Office quickly explained it had nothing to do with Taiwanese independence, but is merely a policy to highlight the entity of Taiwan.
On the domestic side, the name changes will involve at least 27 government-affiliated agencies belonging to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Transportation and Communications, Ministry of Education and Ministry of the Interior.
On the diplomatic front, the overhaul of the various names used by Taiwan's 119 overseas offices and missions will be a highly politically sensitive and time-consuming task. No one knows when it can be completed, even though Chen vowed to finish the job in two years.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said the government's two favorite names for its overseas representative offices and missions are the Republic of China (ROC) and Taiwan.
Currently, 38 of the country's overseas offices adopt the ROC in their official titles.
They include Taiwan's 27 embassies, three consulate-generals -- in Paraguay, Honduras and Panama, and commercial offices in Ecuador, Bolivia, Fuji, Papua New Guinea, Nigeria, Bahrain, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
"Taipei" is used in the titles of 81 of Taiwan's overseas representative offices, while the country's missions in Hong Kong, Macau, Okinawa and at the World Trade Organization (WTO) use names that almost conceal which country they represent.
The "Sino-Ryukyuan Cultural & Economic Association Ryukyu Office" stands for Taiwan's mission in Okinawa, and the country's representative office at the WTO is called the "Permanent Mission of the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu."
Name changes of the offices are not a new idea, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山) said. "We had been working toward this when we were in the US," he said, referring to his decades-long political activities in America.
"Now he [President Chen] has announced the goal. We have to implement his policy," the minister said.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
The Republic of China Army Command yesterday relieved Kinmen Defense Battalion commander after authorities indicted the officer on charges connected to using methamphetamine. The Kinmen District Prosecutors’ Office on Wednesday detained Colonel He (何) after the Coast Guard linked him to drug shipments and proceeded to charge him yesterday for using and possessing crystal meth. The man was released on a NT$50,000 bail and banned from leaving Kinmen, the office said. Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Chen Chien-yi (陳建義) told a news conference yesterday that He has been removed and another officer is taking over the unit as the acting commander. The military
RSS