Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) on Thursday made corrections to a list of five Taiwanese cities, marking them as “Chinese Taipei” after initially listing them as being in China.
The move came after Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) initiated a protest by the five municipal heads earlier on Thursday against ICLEI over the issue.
In a letter of protest, Chen, Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德), Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) demanded the speedy substitution of “China” with “Chinese Taipei” when referring to their respective cities.
Lai threatened to withdraw from ICLEI’s mayoral alliance if the correction was not made promptly.
The Kaohsiung City Government said the city joined ICLEI under the name of “Kaohsiung, Chinese Taipei,” in December 2006. It pays annual fees and is keen to take part in the council’s ecological and climate change initiatives.
The ICLEI is an international association of local governments and national and regional local government organizations that are committed to sustainable development.
A mayoral alliance was formed in September last year at an ICLEI climate summit, the city government said, adding that in a Wednesday news release, ICLEI listed the five municipalities as being in China.
Chen, in her capacity as chair of the EcoMobility Alliance, sent a letter of protest signed by all five mayors to ICLEI secretary-general.
“We have the right to ask that any papers published [by the ICLEI] refer to our nation as Chinese Taipei, and the organization should at least give us a minimum of respect,” Chen said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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