Taiwan President Lai Ching-te celebrated the island’s baseball team after winning an international championship in Japan, a rare sporting achievement that brought a wave of pride in being Taiwanese.
Taiwan competes in global sporting events as “Chinese Taipei” to avoid political objections from Beijing, which regards the island as its own, but its athletes are widely defined by the president, his government, and many Taiwanese simply as belonging to “Team Taiwan”.
On Tuesday the team took part in a crowded ticker tape parade through central Taipei to the presidential office in the backs of military jeeps and trucks, all wearing black sweatshirts with the word “Taiwan” in English printed on the front.
“Thank you for putting Taiwan on top of the world. You are all the light of Taiwan,” Lai told the team, wearing the same hoodie.
Captain Chen Chieh-hsien celebrated the decisive victory over Japan in the WBSC Premier12 final in Tokyo on Sunday by pointing to the empty space on his jersey where the name of a team’s country is usually written.
Only the words “CT,” short for Chinese Taipei, appear on Taiwan’s uniform.
The moment went viral on social media and was seen by many as a symbol of defiance against China, which Taipei often accuses of pressuring international bodies not to use the name “Taiwan”.
“That gesture was to tell everyone that we are Taiwanese players,” Chen told reporters as he was greeted by hundreds of fans at the airport upon his return Monday evening, including Taiwan Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim.
Speaking to the team after Lai, Hsiao thanked them for allowing the world to see Taiwan, a name she said is sometimes overlooked on the world stage.
“Behind the name Taiwan is the pride we see today, but there is also a lot of sadness, setbacks and challenges,” he said.
Baseball is extremely popular in Taiwan having been introduced during the Japanese colonial era from 1895 to 1945.
In 2018, Taiwanese voters in a referendum rejected the proposal to participate in the Olympics as “Taiwan” instead of “Chinese Taipei”. Many feared that the name change would prompt China to try to exclude the island from the Games altogether.
Lai and his government reject Beijing’s claims of sovereignty, saying only the people of Taiwan can decide their own future.
