The Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) is calling for a change in the name of Taiwan’s representative office in the US, Formosan Association for Public Relations (FAPR) executive director Coen Blaauw said on Tuesday.
The Washington-based group decided to advocate for the name change after the Taiwan Travel Act, which encourages reciprocal visits by senior government officials from the two nations, was signed into law by US President Donald Trump in March, Blaauw said.
The group hopes that the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office can be renamed the Taiwan Representative Office, because the current title includes only Taipei, not Taiwan, making it appear that the office represents only Taipei, instead of all of Taiwan’s 23 million people, he said.
Asked whether the proposal has made any progress, Blaauw said it was still in the initial phase.
The director of the American Institute in Taiwan’s Taipei office functions as the US’ de facto ambassador to Taiwan, but the director’s appointment, unlike ambassadors to other nations, does not require approval from the US Senate, he said.
The association would like to see the appointment of directors made to be subject to Senate approval, he added.
The association also supports the establishment of official diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the US, Blaauw said.
He made the remarks during a meeting with a delegation led by Michael Tsai (蔡明憲), head of the Taiwan United Nations Alliance, which is in the US to campaign for Taiwan to join the UN and is looking to meet with officials from the US Department of State and the US Department of Defense, as well as members of US Congress.
The delegation hopes to discuss the name change and exchange views with US officials on bilateral relations between Taiwan and the US, Tsai 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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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching