Two lawmakers from Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party have proposed a task force on changing the official names of Taiwan’s representative offices abroad.
Representative offices offer consular services typically found at embassies in countries that do not have formal relations with Taiwan. Many of Taiwan’s representative offices do not include the word “Taiwan” in their official names due to pressure from China, which views Taiwan as part of its territory.
Lawmakers Chiu Chih-wei and Hsu Chih-chieh say the proposed task force would be in charge of standardizing naming practices for Taiwan’s 110 representative offices around the world. They say that the task force would focus on including the word “Taiwan” into these offices’ names.
Chiu says now is the perfect time for such a re-evaluation. The European Parliament is considering adding “Taiwan” to the name of its trade office in Taipei, while a soon-to-be-opened Taiwanese representative office in Lithuania will also contain the country’s name.
Chiu says that it’s important that Taiwan actively takes steps to change the name of its representative offices, and that Taiwan should not wait for other governments to propose the idea.