Taiwan is all set to roll out a new passport in January that emphasizes the word ‘Taiwan’ and minimizes the English words ‘the Republic of China’. Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said that their passports needed to be redesigned to ‘distinguish their nationals from Chinese citizens’.
“Since the beginning of the Wuhan pneumonia outbreak this year our people have kept hoping that we can give more prominence to Taiwan’s visibility, avoiding people mistakenly thinking they are from China,” Wu told reporters.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said it did not matter what “petty moves” Taiwan made, it could not change the fact that Taiwan was an inseparable part of China. China claims democratic Taiwan as its sovereign territory and says only it has the right to speak for the island internationally, a position it has pushed firmly during the pandemic, especially at the World Health Organization.
Taiwan has been debating its identity for years including the name of the country. It had been under wraps, but due to the pandemic, it came back into the spotlight. Notably, the Taiwan government is also considering a name change for its largest airline carrier, China Airlines, to avoid being mistaken as China.