Taiwan on Monday released a new passport that gives a diplomatic touch to the concept of social detachment amid the pandemic.
The official name of the autonomous island, Republic of China, has been reduced, although it remains on the cover in Chinese characters. The words “Taiwan passport” appear in bold. The government said at the beginning of the pandemic that it was all an attempt to lessen the confusion surrounding its citizens traveling during the coronavirus outbreak, and to dissociate them from people from mainland China, as many countries rushed to bar entry of Chinese travelers.
“Today is the day,” Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said in an Instagram post on Monday night. “The great TAIWAN on the cover will accompany the people of the country on trips around the world and will also make the international community more unable to ignore the existence of Taiwan,” she wrote. (She also boasted that, in the past year, Taiwan had managed to slow the spread of the virus while maintaining economic growth.)
The change of passport is the last safeguard in the tense relationship between the island and China, which considers Taiwan to be its own territory and has long warned that it should join the continent.
The revelation comes days before the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, travels to Taipei for a three-day visit to contain China’s attempts in recent years to isolate Taiwan from the global stage, and in support of the secretary Mike Pompeo described it as an attempt to show “what a free China could achieve”.
The Chinese state newspaper Global Times published an editorial threatening a Beijing “avalanche” in response to the announcement. “Fighters from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will fly over the island of Taiwan immediately, declaring Beijing’s sovereignty over the island in an unprecedented way,” wrote the newspaper.
Last weekend, Pompeo also announced that the United States would relax its restrictions on interactions between American officials and their Taiwan counterparts, while the Trump administration tries to put a tougher line against Beijing in its final days.
Relations between Taipei and Beijing have been steadily deteriorating, with China sending military planes into Taiwan’s airspace regularly and using a torrent of menacing language. In October, when Taiwan hosted a reception to celebrate its national day in Fiji, two diplomats from mainland China attended the reception uninvited and sought to photograph the guests. A fight broke out.
In 2002, Taiwan added the words “Issued in Taiwan” to its passport. A few years ago, some Taiwanese citizens started to change their passports by adding stickers that said “Republic of Taiwan”, irritating China. In July, Taiwanese lawmakers passed a resolution to change the document again and asked the transport ministry to consider renaming China’s state-owned China Airlines.
Taiwan’s New Power Party started an unofficial online competition last year to remake the passport cover, and people sent designs with maps of the island, a monk in a canoe and a bird shaking bubble tea on his head.
The authorities opted for a traditional design, with “Republic of China” reduced to a small fraction of its original size and surrounding the icon of a sun.
Taiwan took a look at the design of the new passport in September, months after the coronavirus appeared.
“Our people always hope that we can make Taiwan’s visibility more prominent, preventing people from mistakenly thinking they are from China,” said Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister at the time.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, Hua Chunying, said that “no matter what tricks” the Taiwanese authorities used, they could not “change the fact that Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory”.
On Monday morning, the Bureau of Consular Affairs in Taipei, the capital, said it received more than 700 applications for the new passport, compared with a typical daily average of 1,000, Reuters reported. A new version of the electronic passport has also been launched, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Claire Fu contributed reporting.