Chinese Taipei: The Ticket That Lets Taiwan Compete but Can’t Print Its Own Name

30-second overview: “Chinese Taipei” is the name Taiwan is forced to use at the Olympics and in most international settings. But its backstory is far more complicated than “forced to accept it”: in 1976 in Montreal, it was the Taipei government itself that turned down the International Olympic Committee’s offer of the name “Taiwan”; in the 2018 referendum on renaming, it was the athletes themselves who came out against it. In forty years the name hasn’t changed by a single character, but the ones caught in the bind on the podium have always been the athletes who need that name to compete — not the politicians arguing over it.

On August 25, 1960, the Rome Olympics opened. As the national delegations marched into the stadium one by one, when it came to one team’s turn, its secretary-general, Lin Hung-tan, walking at the very front, raised a white banner bearing two English words: UNDER PROTEST¹.

That year, the team could be called neither the “Republic of China” nor “Taiwan.” The name the IOC had assigned it was “FORMOSA.” Among the athletes was a young man named Yang Chuan-kwang; a few days later he won silver in the decathlon — Taiwan’s first Olympic medal, earned under a team called “Formosa.”

Yang Chuan-kwang, silver medalist in the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics — Taiwan’s first Olympic medal. The team name he competed under that year was “FORMOSA.” (UCLA Southern Campus 1960, Public Domain)

This was the only time in Olympic history that a delegation staged a public protest at the opening ceremony². More than sixty years on, that white banner has long since been packed away into history, but the thing it was protesting has never been resolved: a team gets to compete, yet it cannot use the name it wants.

A Protest Banner Leads the Way

To understand how the four characters “Chinese Taipei” came to be, you first have to see one thing clearly: Taiwan’s name at the Olympics was never something it got to decide for itself.

After the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the “China” seat became a tug-of-war between two regimes. The Republic of China government in Taipei and the People’s Republic of China in Beijing each claimed to be the sole legitimate representative of China, and the IOC was caught in the middle. At the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, the IOC invited both sides of the strait; Taipei could not accept appearing alongside its rival and withdrew in protest before the games began³. At the 1956 Melbourne Games, Taipei competed under the name “China” — this time it was Beijing that withdrew. Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, Taiwan’s Olympic name swung back and forth among “China,” “Formosa,” and “Taiwan,” each swing pushed by the tides of international politics, never once chosen by Taiwan itself.

The paradox is that the years the name actually contained the word “Taiwan” were precisely the years Taiwan had the least say in the matter. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Taiwan competed as “Taiwan,” and Chi Cheng won bronze in the women’s 80-meter hurdles, becoming the first Taiwanese woman ever to win an Olympic medal⁴. But “Taiwan” was a label the IOC had attached based on geographic reality, not a choice made by the government in Taipei. For a Republic of China government that still insisted “I am the real China,” being called “Taiwan” felt like a demotion.

The 1972 Munich Olympics was the last time the Republic of China competed under its full national name, flag, and anthem⁵. The following year, the world changed.

📝 Curator’s Note

Today we’re used to treating “Taiwan” as a proud name worth fighting for, and “Chinese Taipei” as a humiliating compromise forced upon us. But go back to the scene in the 1960s and ’70s, and this pairing is reversed: what the government in Taipei most wanted to hold onto was the claim to represent “China,” and the name it least wanted to accept was precisely “Taiwan” — because being called “Taiwan” would mean admitting it was merely an island, abandoning its claim to being the legitimate government of all of China. In 1968, that bronze medal hanging under the name “Taiwan” was a demotion; in 2024, that same word “Taiwan,” shouted by spectators in the stands, was a source of pride. Half a century on, the very same word had flipped completely.

The World Wanted to Call It “Taiwan”; Taipei Refused

1976 in Montreal is the most counterintuitive chapter in this entire history.

That year’s host was Canada. Canada had already recognized Beijing back in 1970, and under its “One China” policy, it refused to let the Taiwanese delegation enter and compete under the name “Republic of China.” With Taiwan about to be shut out entirely, the IOC stepped in to mediate and proposed a compromise: let Taiwan compete under the name “Taiwan,” while keeping its flag and anthem unchanged⁶.

In other words, back then it was the IOC that wanted Taiwan to be called “Taiwan.” The one who refused, adamantly, was Taipei.

The final call was made by Chiang Ching-kuo. The Republic of China government saw “Taiwan” as an arrangement that would demean its national status: accepting it would mean tacitly admitting it was nothing more than a local authority on an island, giving up its claim to represent the whole of China. So, the day before the opening ceremony, the Taiwanese delegation chose to withdraw, and the entire team packed up and went home⁷. One researcher later summed up the decision this way: “it was the KMT that made this decision. It was an own goal, basically.”⁸

⚠️ Contested View

Reducing the 1976 Montreal story to “Canada bullied Taiwan” is a common misreading. The truth is more complicated, and more painful: the world offered Taiwan the name “Taiwan,” and it was Taipei itself, standing on sovereignty, that pushed it away. Pointing this out isn’t meant to pass moral judgment on either side — it’s meant to restore a causal chain that’s often gotten flipped around. The popular claim that “Chinese Taipei equals a humiliation Taiwan was forced to swallow” actually has the direction reversed. At least once, Taiwan lost its chance to compete under the name “Taiwan” because it shut that door on itself.

The cost of withdrawing surfaced quickly. In 1979, the IOC, voting by mail from Nagoya, Japan, formally established the “two Chinas” Olympic model that persists to this day: Beijing’s committee would compete as the “Chinese Olympic Committee,” using the flag and anthem of the People’s Republic of China; Taipei’s committee would have to change its name, and its flag and anthem could no longer be the same as before⁹. If Taiwan wanted to return to the Olympics, it would have to change its name, change its flag, and change its song.

They Won the Case, Then Accepted a New Name

Faced with the Nagoya resolution, Taiwan didn’t immediately bow its head — it fought a lawsuit first.

IOC member Hsu Heng and Taiwan’s Olympic committee filed suit at the end of 1979 before the district court in Lausanne, Switzerland, where IOC headquarters is located, arguing that the Nagoya resolution violated the Olympic Charter¹⁰. On March 27, 1980, the court issued an interim ruling finding that the IOC’s actions “appeared to contravene the spirit and letter of the Charter, particularly Articles 64, 65, and 66,” and ordered that “the 100-Swiss-franc hearing fee be borne by the IOC, with a further 500 Swiss francs paid to Mr. Hsu Heng [the plaintiff] to cover his expenses.”¹¹

Legally, Taiwan won this case. But then what? The fact that the IOC had violated its own Charter was now established, yet Taiwan still couldn’t get back in. The Nagoya resolution reflected a much larger shift in the international balance of recognition, and no court ruling could undo that. So the lawsuit became a bargaining chip instead. On January 26, 1981, Hsu Heng and others reached an understanding with the IOC’s newly elected president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, and withdrew the suit¹².

Two months later, on March 23, 1981, the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee’s secretary-general, Shen Chia-ming, and Samaranch formally signed the Lausanne Agreement (the Agreement Between the IOC and the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee). The agreement fixed the name still in use today: CHINESE TAIPEI OLYMPIC COMMITTEE, country code TPE¹³. One detail reveals the political calculation at work: in the Olympic parade of nations, TPE was grouped under “T,” deliberately arranged so it would not sit next to the “C” entries for “China,” avoiding any visual suggestion of a “two Chinas” lineup.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, then president of the IOC. On March 23, 1981, he and Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee secretary-general Shen Chia-ming signed the Lausanne Agreement, permanently fixing the name “Chinese Taipei” — a name that has now lasted forty years. (Photo: Leo Medvedev, CC BY-SA 4.0)

📝 Curator’s Note

“They won the case, then accepted a new name” sounds like a self-contradicting outcome, but this is exactly where “Chinese Taipei” is most misunderstood. It’s neither pure surrender nor pure victory. Taiwan proved in court that the IOC was in the wrong, yet at the negotiating table it accepted a name that wasn’t its first choice — because the cost of being shut out of international sport for a full decade was harder to bear than an imperfect name. For athletes, being able to compete has always come first.

A new name needed new symbols. The flag was drafted by Lin Hsing-hsiung and finalized by Weng Ming-yi, with Chiang Ching-kuo personally selecting the “plum-blossom five-rings flag” from three draft designs: an outer ring in the flag’s blue, white, and red, a Blue Sky, White Sun emblem at the center, and the Olympic five rings set below¹⁴. This flag, later known simply as the “plum-blossom flag,” replaced the Blue Sky, White Sun, and a Wholly Red Earth flag from then on, appearing on the podium at every Olympics since.

The Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee flag, commonly called the “plum-blossom flag.” The outer ring’s blue, white, and red are taken from the Republic of China flag; the center holds the Blue Sky, White Sun emblem; the Olympic five rings sit below. Adopted after the 1981 Lausanne Agreement, it replaced the national flag on the podium. (Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

The Same Melody, Different Words

If you’ve ever watched a Taiwanese athlete win gold at the Olympics, you’ll notice that what goes up isn’t the national flag, and what plays isn’t the national anthem. But what a lot of people don’t notice is that the “national flag song” played on the podium, while its melody is familiar, has completely different words than the ones you’d expect.

The Lausanne Agreement barred Taiwan from using its national anthem, so the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee came up with a clever solution: keep the melody of the national flag song, but write entirely new lyrics. The new words were written by Chang Pi-te, then vice-chairman and secretary-general, approved by the IOC Executive Board on June 1, 1983, and used for the first time at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics¹⁵.

✦ The opening lines invoke the Olympic movement itself — with no regard to religion or race — dedicated to friendship and world peace, with the youth of five continents gathering at the Games.

Read it once and you’ll notice: this song contains no “Taiwan,” no “Republic of China,” not even “Chinese Taipei” — it speaks only of the Olympic spirit, world peace, and the youth of the five continents. A song born purely so the team could compete, deliberately invoking no nationality of any kind. When the Lin-Yang Duo, Kuo Hsing-chun, or Lin Yu-ting step onto the highest spot on the podium, this is the anthem that plays: a familiar melody with unfamiliar words. Most Taiwanese have heard that melody, but not all of them know its words were swapped out long ago.

A medal-ceremony clip from the 2024 Paris Olympics, from the IOC’s official channel. When a Chinese Taipei athlete steps onto the podium, this is the anthem that plays — a familiar melody with unfamiliar words, containing neither “Taiwan” nor “Republic of China.”

With the name, the flag, and the anthem — all three symbols replaced — Taiwan finally returned to the Olympic stage in 1984. The price was that, from then on, it could never again hear its true name on the international stage.

One English Name, Two Chinese Translations, a Battle Over Sovereignty

The English name “Chinese Taipei” was settled, but the trouble was only beginning — because it has two different Chinese translations.

On April 6, 1989, Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee secretary-general Lee Ching-hua and Chinese Olympic Committee chairman He Zhenliang signed an agreement in Hong Kong — commonly called the “1989 Consensus” — confirming that the official Chinese translation of “Chinese Taipei” would be Zhonghua Taipei (中華台北), built on 中華, the character pair tied to the Republic of China. The agreement’s text was specific: “… whenever Taiwanese sports teams and sporting organizations are referred to in Chinese, they shall be called ‘Zhonghua Taipei.’”¹⁶

The problem lay in the clause’s scope. Read closely, and the agreement only governs documents, handbooks, letters, name plates, and broadcasts produced by event organizers — in other words, it binds the official organizing committee, not the media. That loophole later became a crack that kept leaking: Chinese state media could go on legitimately using a different Chinese rendering, Zhongguo Taipei (中國台北), built on 中國, the character pair tied to the People’s Republic. Starting in April 2017, China’s CCTV began systematically calling Taiwan’s teams Zhongguo Taipei as well¹⁷.

For Taiwan, Zhonghua Taipei and Zhongguo Taipei differ by a single character, yet the difference in meaning is enormous. The Mainland Affairs Council’s position is that Zhongguo Taipei demeans Taiwan and violates the Olympic model; the PRC’s Taiwan Affairs Office, on the other hand, says both renderings are simply Chinese translations of “Chinese Taipei,” with no demeaning involved. Even within Taiwan, there’s no consensus on this one-character fight. After Tsai Ing-wen attended the 2016 World Health Assembly (WHA) under the name Zhonghua Taipei, she said, “The designation wasn’t demeaning, nor was it constrained by any political framework — we lived up to expectations and completed the mission.”¹⁸ KMT chairman Eric Chu hit back, accusing the DPP of double standards: “It can’t be that when the KMT attends the WHA as ‘Chinese Taipei’ it’s a national humiliation and self-demeaning, but when the DPP does the same thing, it’s professional and pragmatic, not demeaning at all.”¹⁹ National Taiwan University philosophy professor Lin Huo-wang weighed in too: “‘Chinese Taipei’ is fine too,” he said. “Accepting political reality makes me think Tsai Ing-wen is a very pragmatic person.”²⁰

📝 Curator’s Note

The name hasn’t changed in forty years, but what it points to keeps being redefined. To Beijing, it’s Zhongguo Taipei, a regional branch office. To the Japanese NHK announcer broadcasting the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, it was the words that slipped out involuntarily: “台湾です” (“It’s Taiwan”). To the athletes, it’s the price of admission. The same string of letters, “Chinese Taipei,” carries a completely different political frequency depending on whose mouth it comes out of. What this war is really fighting over is who gets to interpret the name.

The reach of the “Chinese Taipei” model extends far beyond the Olympics. At the 1990 Beijing Asian Games, Taiwan returned under the Chinese Taipei name. In November 1991, Taiwan joined the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) alongside China and Hong Kong as a “Chinese Taipei” economy — the first intergovernmental international organization Taiwan had joined since withdrawing from the United Nations in 1971²¹. From 2009 to 2016, Taiwan attended the World Health Assembly as an observer under “Chinese Taipei” for eight consecutive years, and has not been invited again since 2017²². That’s how the “Olympic model” spilled out from a sporting arrangement into the standard template for Taiwan’s participation in almost every international organization where China has a seat.

The Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee emblem, an identifying symbol approved alongside the flag after the 1981 Lausanne Agreement. Compared with the flag that flies on the podium, the emblem appears more often on athletes’ uniforms and official documents — and, together with the “Olympic model,” it has carried over into APEC, the World Health Assembly, and other settings far removed from sport. (Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Those Hurt Most by the Name Have No Vote

In 2018, a referendum put the “name” question, for the first time, directly into the hands of the entire Taiwanese public.

The initiator was Chi Cheng — and the name Chi Cheng itself carries the full contradiction of “Chinese Taipei’s” entire history. In 1968 she won Taiwan’s first women’s Olympic medal under the name “Taiwan”; in 1981, she was one of the people who personally helped establish the Chinese Taipei Olympic model and bring Taiwan back to the Olympics²³; from 1981 to 1990, she served as a legislator after being recruited by the KMT. Then, in 2018, this same establishment stalwart led the “Tokyo Olympics Renaming Referendum,” arguing that Taiwan should compete under the name “Taiwan.” One person, over the course of forty years, went from the name’s architect to the name’s opponent.

A profile of Chi Cheng from FTV’s documentary series Taiwan Yanyi, tracing her entire arc: the “Flying Antelope” of Mexico City 1968, the key figure who helped bring Taiwan back to the Olympics in 1981, and the woman who led the 2018 renaming referendum. One person, carrying the full contradiction of the name “Chinese Taipei.”

The full text of Referendum Question 13 was unambiguous: “Do you agree that Taiwan should apply to participate in all international sporting events, including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, under the full name ‘Taiwan’?”²⁴

The referendum brought two forces into direct collision. On one side were supporters of the renaming, who saw it as a matter of dignity. On the other side, coming out publicly against it, were the people most directly affected by the name of all — the athletes themselves. Badminton player Chou Tien-chen said: “Athletes compete with their lives on the line, and all we want is a stage — we don’t need an ideological renaming.”²⁵ Sprinter Yang Chun-han appealed directly to voters: “Every one of your votes will affect our future …”²⁶ Weightlifting gold medalist Hsu Shu-ching put it even more bluntly: “Cast your vote against it.”²⁷

The athletes’ fear stemmed from the IOC’s own stance. During 2018, the IOC sent three separate letters to the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee, stating explicitly that it would not approve a renaming application, that it would treat excessive outside pressure as political interference, and that it might even revoke its recognition of the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee²⁸. For athletes whose livelihoods depend on the right to compete, this was a threat to their entire careers.

But there’s a key point that’s commonly confused here. Look closely at what the IOC was actually threatening, and you’ll find it was warning against “the name actually being changed,” not “someone voting to request a change.” The Olympic Charter only triggers suspension when a government or institution “interferes with the operation of a National Olympic Committee”; a referendum passing merely requires the government to submit an application, and the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee, as a private organization, could in theory choose not to act on it — suspension would not be triggered automatically²⁹. Taiwanese fact-checkers such as the Plain Law Movement have likewise pointed out that treating “renaming referendum equals automatic disqualification” overstates the threat.

⚠️ Contested View

So were the athletes’ fears simply unfounded? Not entirely. The political dynamics after a referendum’s passage would have been full of uncertainty, and the IOC’s three letters alone created real pressure — pressure doesn’t need to actually turn into suspension to keep an athlete up the night before a vote. This is the cruelest thing about “Chinese Taipei”: it takes a political dilemma that should be shouldered by society as a whole and ultimately presses it down onto the group with the least say, yet the most direct consequences to bear. The people hurt most by this name are precisely the people with the least room to fight for changing it.

On November 24, 2018, the referendum results were announced. Votes in favor: 4,763,086 (45.20%). Votes against: 5,774,556 (54.80%). Turnout: 55.89%³⁰. The renaming measure was defeated by a margin of roughly one million votes. After the vote, Kuo Hsing-chun said: “With the referendum not passing, it’s more reassuring for the athletes — we don’t have to bear that risk.”³¹

A TTV News report on the debate that loomed largest before the referendum: if the renaming passed, would the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee be expelled by the IOC? The truth or falsity of that very question was the crux of the disagreement between athletes and renaming advocates.

Forty Years On, the Name Remains, the Fight Remains

The referendum ended, but the tug-of-war over the “name” playing out on every athlete’s body has never stopped.

Before the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, short-track speed skater Huang Yu-ting was photographed practicing in a Chinese team uniform embroidered with the word “China.” Facing the backlash, she responded: “In the world of sport, we don’t distinguish by nationality”³² (sic), and also said that competing “feels just like playing on home turf”³³. The Sports Administration ruled the act inappropriate, suspended her subsidy for two years, and pledged to revise the relevant regulations³⁴. Faced with the same question of “the name,” some people fight desperately to shout “Taiwan,” while others feel nationality shouldn’t be part of sport at all. This is a fault line running straight through the athletic community itself.

A 2022 CTS News report: Huang Yu-ting practicing in a Chinese team uniform embroidered with “China” sparked an uproar. She said, “In the world of sport, we don’t distinguish by nationality” — while the Sports Administration’s sanction drew a different kind of line.

And sometimes what gets taken away is something more concrete. At the opening of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, when the emcee announced “Chinese Taipei,” a Japanese NHK broadcaster blurted out, on air, “台湾です” (“It’s Taiwan”)³⁵ — four characters that many Taiwanese social-media users called “the most moving moment of the night.” But by the 2024 Paris Olympics, in the stands during the men’s doubles badminton gold-medal match, a banner reading “Taiwan” was seized and torn apart on the spot by event staff and spectators believed to be Chinese nationals³⁶. On the court, Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin won the gold medal; on the podium, what rose was the white plum-blossom flag, and what played was the anthem that contains no word “Taiwan.” The name was still the same one from forty years before.

After the Paris Olympics, Taiwanese media and the public grew increasingly comfortable calling the team “Team Taiwan” outright, rather than the old “Chinese team” — even sports reporters more often reached for phrases like “Taiwanese heroes”³⁷. Society’s emotional scale on the name is shifting, but the flag and the anthem on the Olympic podium haven’t shifted with it.

It was in the midst of this same tug-of-war that Chi Cheng stepped forward once more. In July 2021, the very woman who had personally helped bring Taiwan back to the Olympics in 1981 announced she would push for another renaming referendum, this time aimed at the 2024 Paris Olympics. This time, former president Ma Ying-jeou publicly opposed it, saying the renaming would “only hurt Taiwan.”³⁸

From the “UNDER PROTEST” banner in Rome in 1960 to the torn-up “Taiwan” sign in Paris in 2024, more than sixty years separate the two. Across those sixty-plus years, the people who wanted to be called “Taiwan” and the people who wanted to preserve “Chinese” kept trading sides: the IOC once wanted to give Taiwan the name “Taiwan,” and Taipei pushed it away itself; athletes once used their votes to reject the name “Taiwan,” yet on the field they long for someone to shout “Taiwan” on their behalf; Chi Cheng personally helped forge “Chinese Taipei,” then spent the second half of her life trying to overturn it. No one has ever stood still in one place.

And that ticket still only lets Taiwan take the field — it still cannot print its own name on itself. The next time you see the plum-blossom flag rise on the podium and hear that anthem with no word “Taiwan” in it, you’ll know that battle has been fought for forty years, with no winner yet. And the one caught in the bind has always been the person standing on the podium.

Further Reading

• Taiwan’s Labeling Problem in International Standards — From ISO 3166 to open-source software, how the name “Taiwan” gets written and contested across global digital infrastructure — the same root conflict as Olympic naming, fought on a different battlefield
• Taiwan’s Independence-Unification Spectrum — Why Taiwanese people feel such divergent emotions about the names “Chinese” and “Taiwan,” and the full identity spectrum behind that divide
• Taiwan’s Diplomatic Allies and International Diplomacy — Beyond where the “Olympic model” spilled over, the same naming bind Taiwan faces in formal diplomacy
• Chi Cheng — The Flying Antelope’s complete arc, from the 1968 Mexico City bronze medal, to a 1981 architect of the system, to the 2018 renaming-referendum initiator
• Yang Chuan-kwang — The Asian Iron Man who won Taiwan’s first Olympic medal under the name “Formosa” at Rome in 1960
• The Invisible Nation — In this documentary, Chi Cheng holds up her 1968 Olympic bronze medal and asks: “Is Chinese Taipei even the name of a country?”

Image Sources

• Hero / 1960 Rome “UNDER PROTEST”: Olympische Spelen te Rome — Formosa liep onder protest, photo by Harry Pot / Nationaal Archief (the Netherlands), CC0 1.0.
• Yang Chuan-kwang: C. K. Yang — UCLA Southern Campus 1960, Public Domain (PD-US, copyright not renewed).
• Juan Antonio Samaranch: Juan Antonio Samaranch, photo by Leo Medvedev, CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Flag (the plum-blossom flag): Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee flag, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain. The outer ring’s blue, white, and red are taken from the Republic of China flag, the center holds the Blue Sky, White Sun emblem, and the Olympic five rings sit below; adopted after the 1981 Lausanne Agreement.
• Emblem: Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee emblem, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain (released by Denelson83).

Video Sources

All four videos are embedded from official channels (documentary news, event footage, and documentary film — none are UGC reposts):

• Chinese Taipei Olympic anthem, 2024 Paris medal ceremony: Olympics official channel (IOC official)
• Chi Cheng profile: FTV’s Taiwan Yanyi (FTV official)
• Tokyo Olympics renaming referendum debate: TTV News (TTV official)
• Huang Yu-ting’s Chinese-team-uniform controversy: CTS News CH52 (CTS official)

References