Sunday night, November 24, all Taiwanese were excited and happy for the 4:0 victory over Japan, the No.1 World Baseball team by a Taiwanese team player called Chinese Taipei. They won the champions of the third tournament of WBSC Premier 12 2024.
Who is the Chinese Taipei? Are they Chinese? No, Taipei is in Taiwan, so they are Taiwanese. There is a big confusion among a lot of people in the world. Since they are Taiwanese players, why are they not simply named as Taiwan?
Well, it’s a historical issue since the end of WWII that Mao Zedong defeated Chiang Kai-Shek, kicked him out of China and established the People’s Republic of China in 1949. But CKS kept running the ROC business from Taiwan and used Republic of China Olympic Committee ROCOC to participate in all Olympic events until 1972. After the UN R2758, the PRC’s Chinese Olympic Committee COC officially replaced the ROCOC.
The International Olympic Committee IOC gave the KMT/ROC government the name of Formosa in the Rome Olympics 1960, athletes participated under protest. In 1964 Tokyo Olympics and 1968 Mexico Olympics gave athletes the name Taiwan, they also protested. In 1976 athletes kept insisting on using ROC, but were kicked out in Montreal Canada, then ROC quit from the international community. At last, after the Nagoya and Lausanne Agreements, the ROC government ended up accepting the name of Chinese Taipei and back to the international community.
Taiwan people love playing baseball, it’s almost considered as the national sport. Taiwan always promotes friendly baseball games with Japan, Cuba and USA teams. Chinese people seem not interested in the baseball. So, it is not a popular sport in China. They don’t really care of Taiwan’s participating in the worldwide baseball games, until this WBSB Premier 12, Taiwan won the champions.
In 2013, the International Baseball Federation, IBAF merged with the International Softball Federation to create the World Baseball Softball Confederation, WBSB. And the Premier 12 was created by WBSB on 27 November 2014. The first tournament was held by Japan and Taiwan in November 2015. The second was in November 2019 by Mexico, Korea and Taiwan. The third was originally scheduled in November 2023, and postponed to now host in Japan, Mexico and Taiwan.
Although Taiwan's team won the championship on last Sunday night, they are still under the very confusing name of Chinese Taipei. It is a fake name, not representing any legal nation at all. It is all because the KMT government wanted to maintain their fantasy ROC under the feudal system, so they rejected the name of Formosa and Taiwan. Now the DPP are running the ROC government, can President William Lai rectify the right name for the nation? Or is his ROC government still dreaming of returning to China one day?
According to the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the USMG has been authorized as the principal occupying power of Taiwan. So, we also sincerely hope that the US President-elect Donald Trump can step in to take care of Taiwan, the US unfinished business in the West Pacific since the end of WWII. Taiwan needs to settle its final political status. Taiwan is Taiwan.
