In a letter dated Oct. 13, 1994, then-representative to the US Benjamin Lu (魯肇忠) wrote to then-American Institute in Taiwan chairman Nat Bellocchi: “I take great pleasure in informing you that my government has formally approved that the name of our Washington office will be Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States.”
Two months later, on Dec. 20, Bellocchi responded, acknowledging receipt of the letter “informing me of the change in name of your office from the Coordination Council for North American Affairs (CCNAA) to Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States (TECRO).”
In a letter dated Oct. 3, 1990, then-US Department of State executive secretary J. Stapleton Roy had written to then-US national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, then-CIA acting executive secretary James Pittman and then-US Department of Defense executive secretary Colonel John Dubia, saying: “Consistent with the unofficial nature of US-Taiwan ties, the US Government [USG] no longer refers to Taiwan as the ‘Republic of China’ — a term reflecting Taipei’s continuing claim to be the government of China... We refer to Taiwan simply as Taiwan.”
Roy’s verbiage is repeated every year in a memo that the U.S. Secretary of State sends to all its embassies and consular offices around the world prior to Taiwan’s National “Double Ten” Day, where the Secretary of State writes: “The Department reminds posts that, consistent with the unofficial nature of US -Taiwan ties, the U.S. Government does not refer to Taiwan as the "Republic of China," the "Republic of China on Taiwan," or a country. The USG refers to Taiwan simply as "Taiwan."
We therefore have an “American Institute in TAIWAN” and a “TAIWAN Relations Act.”
So why is TECRO called the “Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office” and not the “Taiwan Economic and Cultural Representative Office?”
I understand that in 1994, when Washington asked Taipei for a short list of new names to replace the oddly nondescriptive CCNAA (mis)nomer, Taipei did not submit a possible new name for its representative office with the word “Taiwan” in it — despite Roy stating in 1990 that “we refer to Taiwan simply as Taiwan” in US guidelines.
The TECRO name is nondescriptive, as it has the word “Taipei” in it, which creates the impression that the office only represents the capital and its residents.
It would be the equivalent of referring to the American Institute in Taiwan as the Washington Institute in Taiwan.
It is time that the US started adhering to reality by changing TECRO to a name that is consistent with US policy: the Taiwan Representative Office. It would set an inspiring precedent for other countries to emulate.
Mike Kuo is president of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs.
Criticisms of corruption, a poorly managed bureaucracy and uninformed, unprincipled or unaccomplished policy in China are often met with harsh punishments. Many protesters in the “blank paper movement,” for example, have been disappeared by the authorities. Meanwhile, the WHO has asked China to provide data on its COVID-19 situation, with the Chinese government choosing to disseminate propaganda instead. The first amendment of the US Constitution, written in 1791, prohibits the US government from abridging the freedom of speech, press, assembly, petition, or religion. More than 200 years later, China, the world’s second-largest economy, still lacks the freedoms of speech and the press,
As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) constantly strives to rewrite the Taiwan narrative, it is important to regularly update and correct the stereotypes that the PRC tries to foist on Taiwan and the world. A primary stereotype is that Taiwan has always been a part of China and its corollary that Taiwan has been a part of China since time immemorial. Both are false. Taiwan has always been a part of the vast Austronesian empire, which stretched from Madagascar in the west to Easter Island in the east and from Taiwan in the north to New Zealand in the south. That
I first visited Taiwan in 1985, when I was deputed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to start a dialogue with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). I spent three days talking to officials, the end result being the signing of an agreement where the Republic of China (ROC) recognized the right to self-determination of Tibetans. According to official KMT records in Nanking, Tibet never paid taxes to the ROC government. In 1997, the Dalai Lama made his first ever visit to Taiwan on the invitation of then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). Lee took the bold step of opening Taiwan’s doors to
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the pride of the nation, has recently become a villain to residents of Tainan’s Annan District (安南). In 2017, TSMC announced plans to build the world’s first 3-nanometer fab in Anding District (安定). While the project was once welcomed by residents of Tainan, it has since become a source of controversy. The new fab requires a huge amount of electricity to operate. To meet TSMC’s surging electricity demand, plans are under way to construct a 1.2 gigawatt gas power station near a residential area in Annan District. More than 10,000 Annan residents have signed a petition
RSS