Taiwan and Chinese Taipei???

Thursday March 14, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

While politicians, pundits, media moguls and academics quibble, ponder and parse words in too often self-effacing kowtows to China over discourse, sometimes it takes a good old fashioned, common sense, down to earth baseball manager like Buck Showalter, manager of the Baltimore Orioles to cut through the crap and say it is time to tell it like it is and express what is a de facto reality, namely Taiwan is Taiwan and China is China--end of story!

This came about recently when Showalter, watching the World Baseball Classic (WBC) instructed Taiwanese media in what their own bosses and government should have told them long ago, "Don't use Chinese Taipei anymore." Buck coaches Taiwan pitcher Chen Wei-yin.

Looking back at the sordid history of that name, Chinese Taipei, it dates back to when the KMT's one-party state (ROC) lost its seat in the UN (1971) because it did not want to face the reality that it lost its Civil War, and at the same time did not want to admit to the name Taiwan, because then it would mean that they would have to give up the KMT's one-party state rule over Taiwan and implement a democracy--which it was forced to do eventually. In 1976, it was still possible to march in the Olympics under the name of Taiwan, but the KMT government rejected that. In 1979, the Olympic Committee stated that only China could represent China, but the ROC could participate if it accepted the demeaning name of "Chinese Taipei" and thus if it gave up its anthem, national flag and constitution. Again the KMT in an effort to justify and legitimize its claim to a one-party state that would still "retake china" caved in and cursed the people of Taiwan with the "Quisling name" Chinese Taipei.

While Taiwan is still bound in the Olympics to that moniker cave in, it should not be so in all other arenas and it has taken a baseball manager like Buck Showalter to say what others should be saying, i.e. that the "PRC emperor has no clothes in its claim to Taiwan" and the world should recognize this de facto Taiwanese! democracy and country.