Taiwan not going to boycott ’08 Olympics: The Mainland Affairs Council

According to MAC Vice Chairman Tung Chen-yuan, the issue of attending the Games and whether to allow the torch relay to pass through Taiwan are two different matters.

As a member of the International Olympic Committee, Taiwan is fully eligible to compete in the Games, Tung said.

Tung made the remarks in response to a proposal by a group of Taiwan Solidarity Union legislators that Taiwan boycott the 2008 Olympic Games to protest China’s attempt to downgrade Taiwan in the arrangement of the torch relay.

The legislators, including Lo Chih-ming, Lin Jih-jia and Tseng Tsan-deng, insist that the government should reject the Olympic torch because Beijing has not given up its intent to make Taipei a domestic leg of the torch relay, although it claims Taipei is on an “overseas” route.

According to China’s plan, released in April, the Olympic torch would travel from Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City to Taipei and then continue on to Hong Kong, Macau and several other Chinese cities before arriving in the host city, Beijing.

The government rejected the offer on the grounds that the proposed route purposely downgrades Taiwan’s status to that of a local administrative region of China by attempting to make Taipei the first stop on the “domestic” torch-relay route.

However, the government reportedly is ready to allow the torch to relay through Taiwan after China recently agreed that Taipei will be one of the 22 cities on the “overseas” relay route, without making any adjustments to the order of the relay.

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