Taiwan's new passport gives hope amid growing resistance against China

Months after announcing plans to introduce new passports, Taiwan has rolled out the newly redesigned passport with the aim to separate their name from China.

All existing Taiwanese passports have "Republic of China" written in a large font at the top of the passport with 'Taiwan' printed at the bottom in a smaller font.

While 'Republic of China' has been taken as Taiwan's formal name for years, it has created confusion for the Taiwan residents as they are usually mistaken as Chinese citizens.

Now, especially with the pandemic and China trying to step up efforts to assert sovereignty, Taiwan decided to change the text and design of their passports and focus on the 'Taiwan', rather than 'Republic of China'.

Taiwan officials feel their citizens are, at many points, treated unfairly and are subjected to excessive checks and racist remarks only because they are mistaken as Chinese nationals. To avoid this confusion and 'torture'on Taiwanese, the government decided to change their passports and mark it independent of China.

"The purpose is to increase the visibility of Taiwan so that our people will not be mistakenly identified as coming from China when they travel abroad,"Bureau of Consular Affairs Director General Phoebe Yeh said.

As of now, the officials have already received more than 700 requests for the newly designed passports. The participants in this change have expressed happiness and relief over the redesigning of the passports. "I thought it would happen sooner or later. That is, sooner or later the word Taiwan would appear more and more. And in the future Republic of China will perhaps disappear," saidChen Li-ting, who was one of the first to receive the new passport.

The new passport has 'Taiwan' written on the passport in English in a large font and 'Republic of China' has been removed completely — except for the placing of it on the emblem.

China, however, expectedly has protested against this move and has claimed that it does not matter what "petty moves" are taken by Taiwan, the country will still remain an "inseparable part of China". The Asian country has also claimed to be the sole voice that has the right to represent the island on international level, especially at the World Health organization (WHO).