By Huizhong Wu — Associated Press, Wednesday 2 February 2022
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — For Taiwan, every appearance on the global stage is fraught with politics — and even more so when that stage is China. The four Taiwanese athletes competing in Beijing at the Winter Olympics can’t use Taiwan’s flag. They have long competed under a name — Chinese Taipei — that is rarely used and was forced on the team by a geopolitical divide that predates the Cold War.
Taiwan is an island of 24 million people off China’s east coast that functions in many ways like a country with its own government and military. But China claims Taiwan as its territory, and only 14 countries recognize Taiwan as a nation. The divide was born of a civil war in the late 1940s in which the Communists toppled the Republic of China’s government and founded the People’s Republic of China. The name issue surfaced at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, when communist China successfully protested the island’s participation under ‘The Republic of China,’ Taiwan’s formal name. A 1981 agreement with the International Olympics Committee created the name ‘Chinese Taipei’ and allowed athletes to compete under a newly designed white flag with a flower outline around a sun and the Olympic rings in the middle, with a flag-raising song played at medal ceremonies instead of the anthem.
In the decades since, a Taiwanese identity distinct from China has grown stronger. The share of the population identifying as Taiwanese has risen to 62%, up from 48% in 2008. In 2018, former Olympian Cheng Chi launched a national referendum to change the team’s name to Taiwan for the Tokyo Olympics. The vote failed after many athletes came out against it, worried that the change could result in them being blocked from competing. Slalom skier Maggie Lee, 19, a Taiwanese Winter Olympian, noted: “When I’m meeting people, I’ll tell them I’m from Taiwan, because if you tell people you’re from Chinese Taipei, nobody knows where you’re from.” Many athletes say they just want to focus on the competition, not the politics.