For Taiwan, every appearance on the global stage is fraught with politics — and even more so when that stage is China.
The four Taiwanese athletes competing in Beijing at the Winter Olympics, which open tomorrow, cannot use Taiwan’s flag. They have long competed under a name — Chinese Taipei — that is rarely used and was forced on the team by a geopolitical divide that predates the Cold War.
Lee Wen-yi, a 19-year-old slalom skier, found herself giving people an impromptu lesson in the name as she traveled across Europe for training and competitions ahead of the Olympics.
Photo: Szollos Peter via AP
“When I’m meeting people, I’ll tell them I’m from Taiwan, because if you tell people you’re from Chinese Taipei, nobody knows where you’re from, you can’t find it on Google,” Lee said.
The name issue first surfaced at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Taiwanese athletes had competed as the Republic of China (ROC) in the previous two Winter Games, under the national flag.
It was the People’s Republic of China’s first time at the Olympics and Beijing successfully protested the ROC’s participation. The athletes got the bad news after arriving in Lake Placid, said Thomas Liang, a cross-country skier who competed in the 1972 and 1976 Games.
“We all went to the US, but they wouldn’t let us on the playing field,” Liang said. “I was sad because I couldn’t compete. Losing this opportunity was such a shame.”
The next time Liang went to the Olympics, he was a coach, and his team was known as Chinese Taipei.
A 1981 agreement with the International Olympics Committee created the name and allowed athletes to compete under a newly designed white Olympic flag. A flag-raising song is played at medal ceremonies instead of Taiwan’s anthem.
In the decades since, a Taiwanese identity distinct from China has grown stronger, even as the nation developed close economic ties with China.
The share of the population identifying as Taiwanese has risen to 62 percent, up from 48 percent in 2008, according to an annual survey by National Chengchi University, while 32 percent identify themselves as both Chinese and Taiwanese, and just 3 percent say they are Chinese.
Under President Tsai Ing-wen, who took office in 2016, Taiwan has sought to shore up its de facto independence, while stopping short of declaring formal independence.
China has responded by sending warplanes on training missions in Taiwan’s air defense identification zone and cajoling other nations to break their diplomatic ties with Taipei. It has also pressured airlines, hotels, luxury brands and others doing business in China to label Taiwan as a province of China online and on maps.
However, not everyone was satisfied with the “status quo.” Former Olympian Cheng Chi in 2018 launched a national referendum to change the Olympic team’s name to Taiwan for last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics.
“Is our country’s name Chinese Taipei? Of course not,” Cheng said in a 2018 interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times). “In the past, we accepted that one moment of injustice to ensure the fulfillment of a lifetime of striving.”
The vote failed after many athletes came out against it, worried that the change could result in them being blocked from competing.
Many say they just want to focus on the competition, and not the politics.
The name does not bother Lee.
“As long as we are clear on who we are, that’s enough,” she said.
At the Winter Olympics this week, the two skiers representing Taiwan say their focus is on doing their best, and that would serve their home nation better rather than political statements.
“I don’t have the right to deal with this issue, as an athlete,” said Ho Ping-jui, the other skier representing Taiwan. “I can only do what is within my ability, which is to train and compete.”
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