An Executive Yuan task force is reviewing templates for name and logo changes for the nation’s passport and China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), following calls to remove the word “China” after several countries refused medical donations from Taiwan after mistaking it for China.
A CAL plane delivering medical supplies to Luxembourg on April 9 was mistaken for the Chinese carrier Air China Ltd (中國國際航空).
The Executive Yuan is awaiting the finalized versions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), Cabinet spokesman Ting Yi-ming (丁怡銘) said.
Photo: Cheng Wei-chi, Taipei Times
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) would review all versions and reach a decision before forwarding it to the Legislative Yuan, a source in the Executive Yuan said.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said that calls to change the name of the airline and the design of the passport cover have received popular support, and that the Legislative Yuan would handle the issue in its extraordinary session.
The DPP caucus has separately proposed a bill calling on the legislature to decide on the matter, for the MOTC to look into measures to further highlight CAL’s country of origin, and to propose medium and long-term measures to prevent the company from being mistaken for Air China.
The DPP said that the MOTC’s measures should protect Taiwanese interests and reinforce the international identifiability of China Airlines as a Taiwanese company by, for example, adding “Taiwan” to its official name, or incorporating a map of Taiwan into its logo.
The New Power Party (NPP) caucus has also submitted a bill suggesting that the MOTC in the short term make the word “China” less prominent or remove it from the company’s name, and add the word “Taiwan” or the form of the island of Taiwan on the bodies of aircraft flying on routes that would not require the renegotiation of flight paths.
As for the passport cover — which Taiwanese travelers have said has led them to be misidentified as Chinese — the DPP said the MOTC should look into measures that would help identify the passport holder as “Taiwanese.”
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS