In his Feb. 20 letter to Rice, Rep. Tancredo writes: “First, it is rather difficult to understand how a decision about what the name of a local business might be in Taiwan is any of the State Department’s concern. Second, for the State Department to equate the renaming of a gas station with a change in Taiwan’s international status is, to say the least, rather puzzling.”

Tancredo was referring to Taiwan’s recent decision to rename three of its state-owned enterprises to get rid of Chinese reference in their titles and add the word “Taiwan” to make them more identifiable with their country of origin and avoid confusion with similarly named Chinese counterparts.

Referring to China’s passage of the anti-secession law in 2005, Rep. Tancredo writes: “Clearly, this act represented a change in the ‘status quo’ — yet the strongest and most direct rebuke to China that State Department spokesman Richard Boucher could muster was ‘[W]e think it’s important for both sides to focus on dialogue.’ The best then-White House spokesman Scott McClellan could do at the time was to characterize the law as ‘unhelpful.’”

The congressman concludes: “We often hear that the State Department is concerned about unilateral actions by either China or Taiwan that might change the ‘status quo.’ In practice, however, the department seems more than willing to criticize Taiwan’s leaders (often for quite trivial things), yet very reluctant to rebuke the leadership in Beijing.”

Tancredo is a member of the U.S. Congressional Taiwan Caucus, a Taiwan-friendly subgroup in the House of Representatives. He has promoted many bills in U.S. Congress in support of Taiwan’s cause in the past few years.

Meanwhile, C.T. Lee, president of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, a Washington-based non-profit organization dedicated to promote international support for Taiwan’s cause, echoed Tancredo’s view, saying the State Department reaction to Taiwan’s “name rectification” campaign is an irony.

Lee said in a written statement that reads: “State Department guidelines over the past decade clearly state that U.S. officials can and may not refer to Taiwan as the ‘Republic of China’ — only ‘Taiwan’ — since the United States and Taiwan do not maintain diplomatic relations. (e.g. Taiwan Relations Act, American Institute in Taiwan, Taiwan desk at the State Department etc...) Now Taiwan no longer uses ‘China’ but starts using ‘Taiwan,’ and the State Department criticizes Taiwan for that! It is the ultimate irony!”