A US congressman has blasted Major League Baseball (MLB) for requiring Taiwan to use the name "Chinese Taipei" when it takes part in the upcoming World Baseball Classic.
Representative Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican, sent an open letter to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig describing his disappointment over the decision to bow to pressure from China.
Pressure
"For more than 20 years, because of pressure from the People's Republic of China, athletes from Republic of China (Taiwan) have been forced to compete under the name `Chinese Taipei' in the Olympic Games even though Taiwan is not subject to the control of the unelected government in Beijing," Tancredo wrote.
"Major League Baseball and the World Baseball Classic should not follow the example of the International Olympic Committee by acting as an accomplice in Communist China's illogical and obsessive effort to restrict the freedom and insult the dignity of the 23 million people who live in Taiwan," the congressman wrote.
Unlike the World Series, essentially a US affair, the World Baseball Classic will be the first truly international baseball competition. The Classic is a "16-team tournament sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation [that] will feature the world's best players competing for their home countries and territories for the first time," according to the official Web site.
The tournament begins on March 3, when Taiwan faces South Korea at the Tokyo Dome in Japan.
"It is unfair and inappropriate to treat Taiwan[ese] citizens this way and it is an indignity to ROC athletes who work just as hard as Cuban athletes, for example -- athletes whose full participation you worked quite diligently to ensure," Tancredo wrote.
Controversy
The congressman was referring to an earlier controversy, in which the US government reportedly intended to use archaic Cold-War era anti-communist regulations to ban the Cuban baseball team from participating in the tournament. After intense lobbying by baseball fans, the Cuban team will be allowed to compete.
Representatives from Major League Baseball were unavailable for comment as of press time.
Several Taiwanese baseball players are members of major league teams in the US, and "as many as 10 players currently tied to Major League organizations" could play for Taiwan's team during the tournament.
The Colorado Rockies -- the home team for the district Tancredo represents -- has two players from Taiwan. Both are pitchers: Tsao Chin-hui (
"MLB should promote fair play -- which, in the end, is truly what our national pastime is all about," Tancredo's letter said.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry