China has used the opportunity of hosting an international sports event to spread propaganda and attack Taiwan’s sovereignty, sources said yesterday, referring to the English-language sport technical handbooks for the Hangzhou Asian Games, which describe Taiwan as “the biggest island of China.”
The Asian Games, initially set to take place from Sept. 10 to Sept. 25, were postponed until next year because of a COVID-19 outbreak in Shanghai, which is less than 200km from Hangzhou.
The “China Overview” section in the English technical handbooks for the 61 sports published by the Hangzhou Asian Games Organising Committee (HAGOC) include the following description: “There are more than 7,600 islands of varying size in the sea area, among which the island of Taiwan, with an area of 35,798 square kilometers, is the largest,” sources familiar with the matter said.
Photo: AFP
The handbooks can only be accessed and downloaded by each country’s National Olympic Committee using the account names and passwords provided by the HAGOC, the sources said.
The content distorts the truth and misleads international society by falsely claiming that Taiwan is part of China, they said.
The Sports Administration notified the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee about the issue in April, asking it to negotiate with the Chinese Olympic Committee or the HAGOC and ask them to delete politically sensitive content, the sources said.
Due to Taiwan and China’s complicated relationship, the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee sent a letter to the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) saying that the politically charged descriptions run counter to the principles of the Olympic Games, the sources said.
The Taiwanese executive board member of the OCA also sent a letter to the committee, saying that the HAGOC had handled the official documents of the Games inappropriately, which would harm the harmony of the Asian Games, they added.
The OCA would not likely respond to the letters, as senior Chinese sports official Wei Jizhong (魏紀中) is the honorary life vice-president of the OCA, the sources said.
The Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee deleted the entire section containing the misinformation before uploading the handbooks to its Web site, but the English version provided to other countries was left unamended, the sources said.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lai Jui-lung (賴瑞隆) yesterday said that China, as a host of the international event, was deceiving itself by falsely claiming that Taiwan is its biggest island, while DPP Legislator Wang Mei-hui (王美惠) called on the government to lodge a stern protest with the Chinese government.
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