What is “Chinese Taipei”?

By J.Y.

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.

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.