Chinese Taipei - Use of The Name

Use of The Name

The name "Chinese Taipei" has spilled into apolitical arenas. The PRC has successfully pressured some religious organizations and civic organizations to refer to the ROC as "Chinese Taipei". The Lions Club used to refer to the Republic of China as "Chinese Taipei", but it now uses the name "Taiwan MD 300". Both the International Monetary Fund. and the World Bank refer to the Republic of China as "Chinese Taipei", and "Taiwan" does not appear on the member countries list of either organization. The ICSU also refers to the Republic of China as "China Taipei", right below "China CAST". The Republic of China is a member economy of APEC, and its official name in the organization is "Chinese Taipei". It is also an observer in the World Health Organization (WHO) under the name Chinese Taipei. It is the only agency of the United Nations that the ROC is able to participate in since 1971.

In the Miss World 1998, the government of the People's Republic of China pressured the Miss World Organization to rename Miss Republic of China 1998 to "Miss Chinese Taipei", it has been competing ever since under that designation. The same happened in 2000, but with the Miss Universe Organization. Three years later at the Miss Universe pageant in Panama, the first official Miss China and Miss Taiwan competed alongside each other for the first time in history, prompting the Chinese government to again demand that Miss Taiwan assume the title "Miss Chinese Taipei". The contestant in question, Chen Szu-yu, was famously photographed tearfully holding her two sashes. Today, neither Miss Universe nor Miss World, the two largest pageant contests in the world, allow Taiwan's entrants to compete under the Taiwan label. In 2005, the third largest pageant contest, Miss Earth, initially allowed beauty contestant Li Fan Lin to compete as "Miss Taiwan"; a week into the pageant, however, her sash was updated to "Taiwan ROC". In 2008, the official name for the ROC, was changed to "Chinese Taipei".

The title "Chinese Taipei" leads some people to believe that "Taipei" is a country. During the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, while Chinese and Taiwanese news channels referred to the team as Chinese Taipei, most foreign outlets simply called the team Taiwan. For sporting events, the ROC team is abbreviated in Taiwan as the Zhonghua Team (中華隊; Zhonghua being a more cultural rather than political variation of the term China), which, in effect, labels it the "Chinese Team".

Starting around the time of the 2004 Summer Olympics, there has been a movement in Taiwan to change all media references to the team to the "Taiwanese Team", and the mainstream Taiwan Television (TTV) is one of the first Taiwanese media outlets to do so. Such usage remains relatively rare, however, and other cable TV channels currently refer to the ROC as the Zhonghua Team and the PRC as the Zhongguo Team, the China team or the mainland China team.

In the 2005 International Children's Games in Coventry, United Kingdom as well as the National Geographic World Championship, the name Chinese Taipei was used too. Chinese Taipei was also the term used by Major League Baseball for the Taiwanese teams that participated in the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classic competitions, competing under the Chinese Taipei Olympic flag. The Little League World Series also refers to the Taiwanese teams as Chinese Taipei (although the uniforms states Asia-Pacific).