While Taiwan’s government is very likely to welcome a name change, the U.S. would need to initiate it.
Senators John Curtis and Jeff Merkley introduced legislation this week renaming Taiwan’s de facto embassy to include the country’s name, from the current one that appeases the Chinese government’s sensitivities, National Review has exclusively learned.
The legislation, which would direct the secretary of state to negotiate the rechristening of the outpost as the “Taiwan Representative Office,” has been introduced twice before. But the bipartisan duo has high hopes for it this time around, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio co-authored the 2023 iteration of the bill and has presided over a decidedly Taiwan-friendly direction at Foggy Bottom.
The Taiwan Representative Office Act also requires U.S. government offices to change all documents’ references from TECRO to the new name, if one is negotiated between the two countries.
While Taiwan’s government is very likely to welcome a name change, the U.S. would need to initiate it.
The de facto embassy of Taiwan is currently called the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO), after its capital city, reflecting decades of U.S. policy that is careful to mollify certain Chinese demands regarding America’s ties to the island nation.
But the office represents Taiwan’s interests in the United States. Taipei is used as a concession to China’s aggressive diplomatic posture, not because the embassy only represents the capital city.
Beijing has long employed a mix of economic coercion, saber-rattling, and diplomatic pressure to deter U.S. policymakers from dropping diplomatic euphemisms designed to deny various forms of recognition of Taiwan’s status as a country. Although Washington does not abide by Beijing’s “One China Principle” that holds Taiwan to be a province of China, Chinese officials often claim, falsely, that it does.
“The United States shouldn’t tolerate pressure from China to undermine the Taiwanese people,” Curtis said in a statement.
China has previously lashed out at countries that use Taiwan’s name for the country’s diplomatic outposts. In 2021, Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open a representative office that used the country’s name, rather than that of its capital city. The Chinese government responded with economic reprisals.
Vincent Chao, a former TECRO political director, told National Review that this nomenclature change would be consistent with efforts to “push back against Chinese actions that degrade Taiwan’s international space” and U.S. policy that has long used the name Taiwan, including in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.
“I think that this bill would be welcomed by the people of Taiwan, and I think certainly there’s a hope that the sentiments expressed in this bill would be taken into consideration by the executive branch.”
Soon after Rubio arrived at State, the department revised its fact sheet on Taiwan, cutting a sentence that said the U.S. does not support the country’s independence, and he has said multiple times that the U.S. opposes Chinese coercion targeting Taiwan. He has also taken steps to change the way that diplomatic documents refer to China’s government, to avoid using nomenclature that legitimizes the Chinese Communist Party’s claims to represent the people over which it rules.
In 2021, the Financial Times reported that the Biden administration considered renaming TECRO to Taiwan Representative Office, but the change was never implemented.
Actions supporting Taiwan in Congress are subject to some of the fiercest lobbying by China’s embassy in Washington. Chinese diplomats are known to send aggressive letters to lawmakers leading the charge on Taiwan-related initiatives, and they have previously leveled threats against top Trump administration officials, including Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz.