We, the people advocating stronger Taiwan-US ties, appeal to US President Donald Trump to enable name rectification for each nation’s de facto embassy in the other nation.
For Taiwan’s mission in the US, we request that the US Department of State accept “Taiwan Representative Office in the US” in place of the “Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office.”
As for the US mission in Taiwan, we urge that it be designated the “US Representative Office in Taiwan” rather than the “American Institute in Taiwan.”
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office is an embassy-equivalent in the US and it is responsible for maintaining and developing bilateral relations between Taiwan and the US. We believe that the name of this office is a misnomer and should be changed.
Employing a city’s name (Taipei) as the title of a national office is not only misleading, but also improper because the name belittles the office’s position, as well as Taiwan’s status.
In addition, the use of “Taiwan” in the Taiwan Relations Act justifies the same nomenclature for the office representing Taiwan.
Therefore, we believe the correct name should be “Taiwan Representative Office in the US.”
The Taiwan Relations Act, the cornerstone of Taiwan-US relations, stipulates: “Whenever the laws of the United States refer or relate to foreign countries, nations, states, governments, or similar entities, such terms shall include and such laws shall apply with such respect to Taiwan.”
Thus, under US law, Taiwan is to be treated as a foreign state-equivalent.
The designation for the US embassy-equivalent in Taiwan should not merely be an “institute.” Instead a more fitting name should include the words “representative office.” Therefore, we urge the adoption of the name “US Representative Office in Taiwan”
Japan recently upgraded its mission in Taiwan. It is now called the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association. In turn, Taiwan renamed its counterpart the Taiwan-Japan Relations Association.
Appropriately, “Japan” and “Taiwan” appear in both names. It is high time the US did its part to support both Taiwan and Japan.
As a nation, Taiwan increasingly faces an existential threat in the international arena.
We appeal to the US, as the leader of the free world and a like-minded democracy, to support Taiwan. It is in the national interests of the US and Taiwan that the nation survive and prosper.
Do not let Taiwan, a nation of freedom, democracy and human rights, perish from the Earth.
Approving the name rectifications we propose would be a small, but significant step forward.
Thank you for your attention. We look forward to hearing from you.
Peter Chen is president of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs in Washington.
In the closing weeks of 2000, an army of Singaporean government officials descended on Washington to make good on a handshake between then-US President Bill Clinton and Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟). They had agreed to strike an FTA after a round of golf in Brunei that past November. Running a small city-state, Singapore’s leaders and their diplomats live with their ear to the ground, attuned to the slightest geopolitical movements. They were motivated then by a big-picture strategic concern — keeping the US embedded in their region. An FTA they thought would help do that. It worked. Clinton’s successor,
On Oct. 7, the Chinese embassy in New Delhi sent letters to the Indian media asking them to refrain from calling Taiwan a country while reporting on its 109th National Day, which fell on Saturday last week. This move backfired and, on the contrary, contributed to the immense popularity of Taiwan among Indians, leading to an outpouring of congratulations for it on Twitter. Asked about the letter, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said: “There is a free media that reports on issues as it sees fit.” Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Tajinder Singh Bagga put up several banners outside the
On Oct. 6, the UN Committee on Human Rights released a statement on the concentration camps in China’s Xinjiang region in which at least 1 million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are incarcerated. On the same day, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was telling delegates at a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) meeting that “happiness among the people in Xinjiang is on the rise.” It was a stark reminder of the CCP’s longstanding practice of trampling on human rights and deceiving the world. In October last year, the Taiwan East Turkestan Association and the Taiwan Friends of Tibet held an event titled
In a Facebook post on Wednesday last week, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) wrote: “The KMT must fall for Taiwan to improve.’ Allow me to ask the question again: Is this really true?” It matters not how many times Hsu asks the question, my answer will always be the same: “Yes, the KMT must be toppled for Taiwan to improve.” In the lengthy Facebook post, titled “What were those born in the 1980s guilty of?” Hsu harked back to the idealistic aspirations of the 2014 Sunflower movement before heaping opprobrium on the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP)
RSS