More than 70 percent of Taiwanese in a poll have said that the government should remove the nation’s English-language name “Republic of China” from the cover of the nation’s passports and only use “Taiwan” as the nation’s English name so that foreign immigration officials would not mistake Taiwanese travelers for Chinese nationals, a poll showed.
The New Power Party (NPP) released the results of its survey yesterday.
The cover of the nation’s passports bears the name “Republic of China” in English under the nation’s official Chinese name, while “Taiwan” is printed in English under the national emblem.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
However, 74.3 percent of respondents said that the passport’s cover should use just “Taiwan” as the English title, as the nation and Taiwanese have often been negatively associated with China amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The change would avoid Taiwanese being confused with Chinese, they said.
According to the poll, 51.2 percent said they were very supportive of the suggestion, 23.1 percent said they supported it, 10.8 percent said they did not support it and 6.4 percent said they absolutely did not support it, while 8.5 percent did not express any opinion.
“People have suggested using stickers or passport holders to distinguish the Taiwanese passport from the Chinese passport. However, stickers might cause confusion. We suggest that the passport cover be redesigned,” NPP Chairman Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said.
The party would ask people to submit their ideas for a new passport cover design before the summer vacation, Hsu said, adding that it would work with experts to create samples for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to consider.
The survey, conducted on Monday and Tuesday last week, collected 1,085 valid questionnaires and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
The results were weighted based on gender, age and education, the party said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
TAIWAN ISSUE: US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on the first day of meetings that ‘it wouldn’t be a US-China summit without the Taiwan issue coming up’ There were no surprises on the first day of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday, as the government reiterated that cross-strait stability is crucial to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the world. As the two presidents met for a highly anticipated summit yesterday, Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Trump that missteps regarding Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict.” Trump arrived in China with accolades for his host, calling Xi a “great leader” and “friend,” and extending an invitation to visit the White House
RSS