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https://goo.gl/1bUKpV

What is“Chinese Taipei”?

It is all to do with the dragon next door


ALMOST overlooked amid the flag-waving participants of the opening ceremony
at the winter Olympics in February was a tiny delegation of four competitors
walking behind a sign that was not the name of an actual country (pictured).
“Chinese Taipei” are two words that have come to symbolise the diplomatic
isolation of a prosperous island of 24m people. Using that name is the only
way Taiwan can participate in many international organisations or events. And
there are many such bodies in which the island still cannot take part at all.
Why is this? And what does the phrase “Chinese Taipei” mean?






The Republic of China (ROC)—China’s official name after the fall of the
imperial system in 1912—was an American ally in the war against Japan. But
its leader Chiang Kai-shek lost the civil war against Mao Zedong’s
Communists that followed, and in 1949 Chiang and his followers fled to
Taiwan. The island inherited the ROC name, even as Mao founded the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland. The outbreak of the Korean war
prevented Mao taking Taiwan, and the island became an America-backed bulwark
against communism during the cold war. Initially authoritarian, Taiwan
developed into a thriving market economy and eventually a democracy. But one
of the conditions prior to Richard Nixon’s opening with Communist China in
1972 was that the United Nations switch its recognition from Taipei to
Beijing. Ever since, the mainland has enforced its claim to be the sole
legitimate government of all of China (including Taiwan) and has attempted to
squeeze the island’s international space by keeping it out of the UN and its
affiliated bodies. Taiwan now has diplomatic relations with only a handful of
small countries, such as Burkina Faso and El Salvador.





In 1976 Taiwan wanted to compete in the summer Olympics in Montreal, as the
ROC. But mainland leaders would not permit “two Chinas” to take part. The
Taiwanese refused to compete under the name of “Taiwan” because doing so
would mean setting aside its own claim to be the rightful government of all
of China. In order to take part in any international arena it needed a name
acceptable to the PRC. “Chinese Taipei” enabled Beijing to look magnanimous
in allowing ethnic Chinese brothers to compete, while not allowing any
recognition of Taiwan as a separate political entity. Taiwan swallows that
indignity in order to get the international participation it desires. While
Chinese state media use a term for it (zhongguo taibei) that translates as “
China’s Taipei”, Taiwanese media use a phrase (zhonghua taibei) implying a
broader, more cultural Chineseness. Using the name has allowed Taiwan to take
part in some important international bodies, such as the World Trade
Organisation, the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum (APEC) and the
Olympics, as well as a host of less important groups, such as the South
Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation. But it all still relies
on the goodwill of mainland Chinese leaders.


際活動只能吞下這個屈辱。中國官媒使用中國台北這個字眼，意涵為中國的台北。而台





Today, however, there is growing backlash in Taiwan against the term Chinese
Taipei, especially among young people for whom a distinct Taiwanese identity
has displaced any vestigial loyalty to the idea of a future unified China. A
recent poll in Taiwan indicated that nearly 60% of respondents consider
themselves to be exclusively Taiwanese, whereas only 37% identify as both
Taiwanese and Chinese. In February pro-independence activists submitted a
petition to the government demanding that Taiwanese athletes be allowed to
compete under the name “Taiwan” at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The trouble
is that China is unlikely to agree, and China’s word carries even greater
weight now than it did back in 1972.



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