Taiwan on Monday issued a new passport that makes the concept of social distance between the pandemic a diplomatic twist.
The island’s official name, Republic of China, has been diminished, though it remains in Chinese characters on the cover. The words “Taiwan Passport” appear in large print. The government said early in the pandemic that it was all an attempt to reduce confusion surrounding the citizens who traveled during the coronavirus outbreak and to distance themselves from people from mainland China, as many countries quickly joined Chinese travelers.
“Today is the day,” Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said in an Instagram post on Monday night. “The great TAIWAN on the front page will accompany the people of the country to travel through the world, and it will also no longer enable the international community to ignore the existence of Taiwan,” she wrote. (She also boasted that Taiwan had successfully slowed the spread of the virus over the past year while maintaining economic growth.)
The passport change is the latest salvo in the strained relationship between the island and China, which Taiwan considers its own territory and has long warned that it must finally unite with the mainland.
The revelation comes days before US Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft traveled to Taipei for a three-day visit to counter China’s efforts to isolate Taiwan on the world stage over the past few years. the secretary. Mike Pompeo describes it as an attempt to show “what a free China could achieve.”
The Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times has published an editorial threatening an “avalanche” from Beijing in response to the announcement. “The fighters of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will immediately fly over the island of Taiwan and declare Beijing’s sovereignty in an unprecedented way,” the newspaper wrote.
Last weekend, Mr. Pompeo also announced that the United States will relax its restrictions on interactions between US officials and their counterparts in Taiwan, as the Trump administration wants to lock up a stricter line against Beijing in recent days.
Relations between Taipei and Beijing have gradually deteriorated, with China regularly sending military aircraft to Taiwan airspace and using a shower threatening language. In October, when Taiwan hosted a reception to celebrate its national day in Fiji, two Chinese diplomats on the mainland showed up at the reception uninvited and tried to photograph guests. A fistfight ensued.
In 2002, Taiwan added the words ‘Issued in Taiwan’ to its passport. A few years ago, some Taiwanese citizens started changing their passports by adding stickers that read, “Republic of Taiwan,” which makes China angry. In July, Taiwanese lawmakers adopted a decision to change the document again, asking the Ministry of Transportation to consider renaming Taiwan’s state-owned China Airlines.
Taiwan’s New Power Party launched an unofficial online competition last year to rebuild the passport cover, and people submitted designs with maps of the island, a monk in a canoe and a bird-balancing bubble tea on his head .
The authorities eventually went with a traditional design, with ‘Republic of China’ scaled down to a small fraction of the original size and an icon of a sun.
Taiwan took a look at the new passport design in September, months after the coronavirus first appeared.
“Our people kept hoping that we could make Taiwan more visible, and avoid people mistakenly thinking they came from China,” Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said at the time.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, then said “no matter what tricks” the Taiwanese government pulled, they could not “change the fact that Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory.”
As of Monday morning, the Bureau of Consular Affairs in Taipei, the capital, said it had received more than 700 applications for the new passport, compared to a typical daily average of 1,000, Reuters reported. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also released a new version of the e-passport.
Claire Fu reported.