As the world’s nations sailed the River Seine during the opening ceremony for the Olympics last month, Taiwan once again suffered the enduring humiliation of being the sole country forced to sail under a fictitious name and flag.
“Chinese Taipei” is not merely a fake place, but part of a strategic campaign by China to conquer Taiwan in the minds of the global public, forcing the international community to accept the fiction that China has authority over Taiwan, as I have written before in the Taipei Times (“Taiwan’s ‘Chinese Taipei’ problem,” May 22, page 8).
If Taiwanese wish to be seen as Taiwan, they must fight back and contest this blatant discrimination and cognitive warfare. While overt protests might be disrupted pre-emptively by the corrupt International Olympic Committee (IOC), other national teams have captured global attention with subtle and profound acts of protest.
In an inspiring anti-colonial protest, the Algerian team cast roses into the Seine under a bridge where French police threw hundreds of innocent Algerians to their deaths six decades ago. Palestine’s flagbearer drew attention for a shirt embroidered with outlines of bombs dropping onto children playing soccer, and a member of the Hong Kong delegation strategically raised his arm to block the “China,” appended to Hong Kong’s banner.
Many small nations have taken the opportunity on the world’s stage to raise their national profile. Mongolia enthralled the world this year with its viral uniforms blending traditional dress with modern uniforms, and who can forget Pita Taufatofua, the oiled up shirtless flagbearer who put Tonga on the map for the entire world?
Taiwan’s own rich history and diverse cultural influences include fashion and traditions with roots in Mongolia and Polynesia, yet it has failed to unleash the same fire as its fraternal Asian and Pacific Island nations.
As Taiwan cinched its first gold on Sunday, badminton duo Lee Yang (李洋) and Wang Chi-lin (王齊麟) were forced to stand under a fake flag for the medal ceremony, even as the flag of the losing Chinese team was hoisted for the silver medal. Lee and Wang’s repeat gold is the pinnacle of athletic achievement, and rightly deserves celebration, but without the indignity of erasing their national identity.
What could memorialize their achievement more in the annals of history than a brilliant act of protest, reclaiming their dignity as Taiwanese? One of the most memorable Olympic moments of all time was the 1968 “black power protest” by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, a political statement remembered long beyond their athletic achievements.
Palestinian swimmers have caught eyeballs for temporary body tattoos — although Taiwanese athletes would likely be unable to compete with visible flag tattoos. What is stopping any athlete from discretely tattooing a flag or political slogan, and removing their shirt to display it during the medal ceremony?
“Chinese Taipei” has not remained confined to the Olympics. “Chinese Taipei creep” has led to the widespread adoption of the term in numerous contexts to refer to Taiwan, leading to the false impression that it is a real place or identity.
While international media have increasingly referred to the team as “Taiwan,” most sportscasters continue to use the false “Chinese Taipei” term. Most reporting has repeated the Chinese lie that the term is a compromise accepted by both sides. This is simply untrue; the colonial term was forced on the Taiwanese during the Martial Law period by the authoritarian Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Unwilling to accept further national humiliation, several Taiwanese spectators in Paris have proudly displayed signs supporting Taiwan, including a young woman with a poster in the shape of Taiwan, who was subsequently assaulted by a Chinese spectator, and a man with a towel simply reading “Taiwan,” who was similarly assaulted by the IOC’s corrupt officials.
A notice prohibiting the Republic of China (ROC) national flag in Olympic venues, along with those of Russia and Belarus, has gone viral on social media. While some Taiwanese condemn the ROC flag for the human rights violations they endured under this flag, it is plainly wrong in the present day to associate the flag of the peaceful nation of Taiwan with those of Russia and Belarus, which are committing war crimes in Ukraine.
Despite these protests summoning international attention toward the issue, international media remain woefully misinformed. CNN’s account of the protesters falsely claims that Taiwan competed as the ROC until the 1970s, ignoring the years when Taiwan participated as “Taiwan” and “Formosa.” The Taiwanese diaspora and advocacy groups have shirked the opportunity to utilize racial justice frameworks to hold their media to account for such discriminatory portrayals.
Of course, in those years the authoritarian ROC government understood the importance of winning international visibility, and sent its delegation to Rome in 1960 with a banner proclaiming “Under Protest.”
One week remains of the Paris games, yet it remains to be seen if Taiwan will stand up and make its voice heard.
Sasha B. Chhabra is an analyst, commentator and media consultant on China’s foreign policy, Taiwanese politics and cross-strait affairs.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS