I would like to respond to a recent article published in the Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) [the translation of which appears on this page as “Time to use ‘Taiwan’ name in Olympics” by Tommy Lin].
I agree with the author that from now on, the country should try to use the name “Taiwan” when participating in the Olympic Games, but I also have some different views to those stated in that article.
First, the article said that Japanese politicians offered to help the country participate in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics under the name of Taiwan. However, I am a bit puzzled by this claim.
There are many Taiwan-friendly members in the Japanese House of Representatives and House of Councillors, and there are some Taiwan-friendly groups such as the Nikka Giin Kondankai (日華議員懇談會), literally the “Japanese-Chinese parliamentary club” (Why can it not be the “Japanese-Taiwanese parliamentary club”?). They often offer assistance to Taiwan.
However, the parliament is one thing, the government is another, and the latter is who sets and implements national policies. Since Japan has official diplomatic relations with China, how can Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s administration and previous Japanese administrations openly support Taiwan’s participation in the Olympics under the name of “Taiwan”?
The article said that then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who served concurrently as the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairperson, not only did not support the name-changing campaign for the Tokyo Olympics, but also tried to “downplay and quash” it in every way, thus making it impossible for the Tokyo Olympics name changing referendum to pass. I believe that this is a big misunderstanding.
Many referendums were proposed at that time, and each had far-reaching consequences for Taiwanese. Perhaps the referendum that the author was concerned about did not seem to be widely discussed by the public, but this did not mean that Tsai did not attach importance to it.
As the most representative figure of Taiwan’s hawkish camp, how could she not support it, or sabotage it by “downplaying and quashing” the campaign? May I ask again, what is the concrete evidence of the alleged sabotage of the referendum?
In addition, the 2018 referendum, which asked people if they supported Taiwanese athletes competing in international sport competitions under the name of “Taiwan,” not passing might be due to the design set out by the National Referendum Act (公民投票法), or that people were neither particularly enthusiastic nor disapproving of the name change.
Instead of accusing Tsai of sabotage, do not forget that before the referendum a group of Taiwanese athletes stood together and shouted: “Names don’t matter, We wanna compete!” and “Politics is politics, sports is sports!” Was the Taiwanese athletes’ call not the straw that broke the camel’s back on this issue?
Hung Yu-jui is a translator and Japanese-language teacher.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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