The change in the name on stamps issued by Taiwan Post Co (臺灣郵政) will not affect the stamps' validity, a spokesman for the state-owned company said yesterday.
The spokesman made the remarks in response to a comment made the previous day by a postal expert with the Berne-based Universal Postal Union (UPU) that individual UPU member countries can invalidate stamps that will be issued by the newly renamed Taiwan Post.
The state-owned postal company formally changed its name from Chunghwa Post Co (中華郵政) -- "Chunghwa" means China -- to Taiwan Post Co on Monday, and plans to issue its first set of stamps marked "Taiwan" on Feb. 28, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 228 Incident.
The stamps will be the first to carry the Chinese characters for "Taiwan stamp" instead of the words "Republic of China stamp."
According to the UPU expert, member countries are entitled to void the new "Taiwan stamp" in line with Article 8 of the UPU Convention regarding the name on stamps.
If any individual UPU member state informs the UPU Secretariat of its decision to invalidate the new "Taiwan stamp," the expert said, the secretariat is obliged to deliver the message to all other member states but individual states would have to decide themselves whether they wanted to follow suit.
However, Taiwan Post believed that was unlikely to happen given the company's good and longstanding ties with UPU members, the spokesman said.
Although Taiwan has not been a UPU member since 1972, it has consistently followed international norms and UPU regulations, the spokesman said.
In related news, the Cabinet yesterday approved amendments to the Postal Law (
The Cabinet had said that the company did not require any authorization from any other organization for its name-change as it is a state-owned firm. However, the law must be amended in reference to the company's new name and submitted to the legislature.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday said he was glad the process of changing the names of state-owned firms was not leaked to the public in advance, which "might have brought unnecessary trouble."
Su said he was even happier that state-owned companies would no longer be mistaken for Chinese companies.
Meanwhile, Beijing continued to lash out at Taipei for the name change. It condemned Taiwan for dropping "China" from the name of state-run firms and introducing "distorted" history books, moves it said were aimed at severing links with China.
Li Weiyi (
"They are evildoings intended for the selfish gains of individuals and a single political party," Li told a news conference, referring to the Democratic Progressive Party.
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