The US National Football League (NFL) labeled Taiwan as a part of China in its latest global marketing plan, igniting protests by a Taiwanese civic group in the US on Friday.
The controversy erupted after the NFL announced in a statement on Wednesday that it awarded 18 teams marketing rights to 26 regions across eight countries.
The statement included a color-coded world map that identified Taiwan as part of China, with both colored in red under the market for the Los Angeles Rams.
Photo: screen grab from the National Football League Communications’ Twitter account
“This groundbreaking, new initiative grants clubs access to international territories for marketing, fan engagement and commercialization as part of an important, long term, strategic effort to enable clubs to build their global brands while driving NFL fan growth internationally,” the statement said.
Ken Wu (吳兆峰), deputy head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, disagreed with the NFL’s decision.
“The existence of the 23 million people in Taiwan cannot be ignored in this way. We ask the NFL to make corrections and apologize,” Wu said. “The NFL should harden up and not kowtow to China.”
US-style football is one of the most complex sports in the world, and it is the sport that Americans are most proud of, Wu said.
Many Taiwanese immigrants and international students living in the US also love to watch football, Wu said, urging the NFL not to disappoint hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese fans.
Wu, a fan of the Seattle Seahawks for 25 years, said he was happy to see football expand overseas and welcomed the NFL to the Taiwanese market so that more people could enjoy the annual championship game Super Bowl, but he has hopes of letting the league’s officials know that “Taiwan is not part of China.”
The Web site of the US television news program The National Desk compared the controversy to the White House cutting the video feed of Minister Without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳) when she displayed a map of Taiwan that differentiated it from China during her presentation at the US Summit for Democracy last week.
The White House offered no formal comment, but the US Department of State said “confusion” over screen-sharing resulted in Tang’s video feed being dropped, and called it “an honest mistake.”
US-based Fox News also reported on the NFL incident.
“The National Football League raised eyebrows on Wednesday by labeling Taiwan as being part of mainland China,” it reported.
Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has died of pneumonia at the age of 48 while on a trip to Japan, where she contracted influenza during the Lunar New Year holiday, her sister confirmed today through an agent. "Our whole family came to Japan for a trip, and my dearest and most kindhearted sister Barbie Hsu died of influenza-induced pneumonia and unfortunately left us," Hsu's sister and talk show hostess Dee Hsu (徐熙娣) said. "I was grateful to be her sister in this life and that we got to care for and spend time with each other. I will always be grateful to
REMINDER: Of the 6.78 million doses of flu vaccine Taiwan purchased for this flu season, about 200,000 are still available, an official said, following Big S’ death As news broke of the death of Taiwanese actress and singer Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛), also known as Big S (大S), from severe flu complications, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and doctors yesterday urged people at high risk to get vaccinated and be alert to signs of severe illness. Hsu’s family yesterday confirmed that the actress died on a family holiday in Japan due to pneumonia during the Lunar New Year holiday. CDC Deputy Director-General Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) told an impromptu news conference that hospital visits for flu-like illnesses from Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 reached 162,352 — the highest
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
Suspected Chinese spies posing as Taiwanese tourists have been arrested for allegedly taking photographs of Philippine Coast Guard ships, local media reported. The suspected spies stayed at a resort in Palawan, where from a secluded location they used their phones to record coast guard ships entering and leaving a base, Philippine TV network GMA said on Wednesday. Palawan is near the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and other disputed areas of the South China Sea, where tensions have been on the rise between China and the Philippines. The suspects allegedly also used drones without permission and installed cameras on coconut trees in the
RSS