The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that the Papua New Guinean government last month insisted that Taiwan’s representative office change its name due to repeated pressure from China.
Since late last year, China had taken advantage of its status as the second-largest provider of aid to Papua New Guinea (PNG) to keep pressuring the government to change the name of Taiwan’s representative office and its treatment of the office’s staff, ministry spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) said.
“Despite the office’s best efforts, the PNG government was not able to withstand China’s carrot-and-stick pressure and eventually demanded a change of name,” Lee said, adding that the name change does not have any substantial impact on the office’s operations.
China’s demands first came to the ministry’s attention in February when Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) praised the PNG government’s adherence to the “one China” principle when responding to reporters’ questions over allegations that Taiwan’s trade office had been asked to rename itself.
The ministry acknowledged at the time that the nation’s trade office in PNG had been asked to change its name, as well as remove its nameplate and diplomatic license plates from its vehicles, but stressed that bilateral negotiations were still underway.
The office, which was previously named the Trade Mission of the Republic of China (Taiwan) in Papua New Guinea has been renamed as the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Papua New Guinea.
It is not the nation’s first overseas representative office to have been forced to undergo a name change due to Chinese pressure.
The nation’s trade offices in Ecuador, Bahrain, Nigeria, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have also been forced to remove the term Republic of China or Taiwan from their designation.
Taiwan and PNG, despite not having formal diplomatic relations, have had close exchanges in the areas of energy, trade and fisheries since the 1990s, Lee said.
“Taiwan has also begun cooperating on agriculture and medical health,” he said.
The ministry understands the situation the nation’s international friends face due to Chinese pressure, Lee said, adding that Taiwan would continue its substantial exchanges and cooperation with PNG to safeguard its dignity and rights.
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical
‘ORDINARY PEOPLE’: A man watching Taiwanese military drills said that there would be nothing anyone could do if the situation escalates in the Taiwan Strait Many people in Taiwan look upon China’s military exercises over the past week with calm resignation, doubting that war is imminent and if anything, feeling pride in their nation’s determination to defend itself. After a visit to Taiwan last week by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China has sent ships and aircraft across an unofficial buffer between Taiwan and China’s coast and missiles over Taipei and into waters surrounding the nation since Thursday last week. However, Rosa Chang, proudly watching her son take part in Taiwanese military exercises that included dozens of howitzers firing shells into the Taiwan Strait off