TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan on Monday launched a redesigned passport that makes the island’s name more prominent on a daily basis, with the aim of avoiding confusion with China amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Beijing’s efforts to assert its sovereignty.
Existing Taiwanese passports have “Republic of China”, their formal name, written in large English font at the top, with “Taiwan” printed at the bottom, creating international confusion according to the government.
During the early days of the pandemic, Taiwan says that some of its citizens were mistaken for Chinese citizens and, at times, unfairly subject to the same entry bans related to COVID-19 when the disease was well controlled in Taiwan, although not in China. The new passport expands the word “Taiwan” in English and removes “Republic of China”, although that name in Chinese and in a small English font around the national emblem remains.
Director-General of the Bureau of Consular Affairs, Phoebe Yeh, told Reuters that as of mid-Monday morning, they had received more than 700 passport applications, compared with a daily average of 1,000 normally.
“The goal is to increase the visibility of Taiwan so that our people are not mistakenly identified as coming from China when they travel abroad,” she said.
Chen Li-ting, one of the first to apply for the new passport, said the change was “fantastic”.
“I thought it would happen sooner or later. That is, sooner or later the word Taiwan would appear more and more. And in the future Republic of China it may disappear,” he said.
China, referring to the new passports, said that regardless of Taiwan’s “petty movements”, that would not change the fact that Taiwan was an inseparable part of China. China claims democratic Taiwan as its sovereign territory and says only that it has the right to speak for the island internationally, a position that it strongly defended during the pandemic, especially in the World Health Organization (WHO).
(Reporting by Yimou Lee and Ann Wang; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)