Taiwan, Taipei — What's in a name?

The charges she pressed against the city — or to be more exact — the special municipality of Taipei, the capital of the Republic of China, are ridiculous. For one thing, the city that hosts an NBA preseason game greets the players, not the country where it is played. It's only natural and in accordance with the tradition that Taipei welcomes the NBA players to the city rather than to the country, which officially at least is called the Republic of China. If Taiwan greeted the players, would the lady city councilor protest that the wrong name is used? Probably, as a blue-blooded member of the pro-independence opposition party she would welcome the welcome being extended by Taiwan.

She may have a point in suspecting the People's Republic wants the use of Taipei rather than Taiwan. The People's Republic prefers Taiwan or the Republic of China to be known internationally as Chinese Taipei. The Chinese Olympic Committee in Taipei was forced to change its name to the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee, with its former name taken over by the one in the People's Republic. Remember we could join the World Health Assembly as an observer only under the name of Chinese Taipei? But that's international politics, not sports where politics is supposed to have no role.

Of course, politics interferes with sports at times. But what's the difference in names? Ask a man on the street what is really the difference between Taipei and Taiwan in the greeting to the NBA players, he'll tell you he doesn't care whichever name is used.

The truth is that it doesn't matter whether Taipei, Taiwan or the Republic of China is used, so far as almost all of us are concerned, for the simple reason that it doesn't change the fact that our country exists. It mattered when President Chiang Kai-shek was alive and kicking. After all, he was elected president of the whole of China in 1948 and ruled very briefly and precariously over it before Mao Zedong forced him to flee to Taiwan. Chiang's ego couldn't let anybody the world over call his much shrunken domain “Taiwan.” The only concession he made to the foreign press was that Free China could be used in place of the Republic of China and Communist or Red China in lieu of Mao's People's Republic. The foreign media began calling Free China, Taiwan, and the People's Republic, China, after Chiang's Republic of China was ousted from the United Nations in 1971. Inasmuch as the United Nations is concerned, the issue was that of representation. China has been represented by the People's Republic after that year.

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