A Closer Look at 'Chinese Taipei'

Chinese Taipei certainly isn't a good moniker for the once beloved Republic of China. No one in Taiwan likes it, one reason being a difference in translation of that term coined solely to circumvent a purely political problem.

Let's go back to the year 1979 when Chinese Taipei was invented.

After Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek moved his Kuomintang (KMT) government from Nanjing to Taipei at the end of 1949, our top athletes started to have problems attending the Olympic Games. The People's Republic of China (PRC) Mao Zedong proclaimed a little earlier, on Oct. 1, insisted that its newly formed Olympic committee replace the one the generalissimo moved from China with his government.