TAIPEI -- Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin became household names in Taiwan on Sunday when they won the island's first ever Olympic gold medal in badminton -- a victory made sweeter as the male duo's opponents were from China.
The historic victory was followed by another first when host Japan played the "national flag anthem" of the Republic of China, as Taiwan is formally known, as the duo stood atop the podium. Lee then took to Facebook to ecstatically post, "I am Lee Yang. I am a proud Kinmen (islander). I am a proud Taiwanese" alongside a photo of his moment of victory.
While this was a taboo statement for many Taiwanese athletes and celebrities who hope to get lucrative endorsements from Chinese companies, Yang was airing feelings of national pride shared by many of his generation who see themselves as a unique nationality.
Taiwanese athletes have been forced to compete without the ROC flag or an anthem at the Olympics for the past 40 years, and under the name of "Chinese Taipei."
"Internally, Taiwanese people are well aware of the difference between 'Chinese Taipei' ( Zhonghua dui ) and 'China' ( Zhongguo dui ), so I would not say the athletes think they are competing under another name," said Daniel Yu-Kuei Sun, a lecturer at Towson University whose research includes transnationalism in Taiwanese athletes.
Zhongguo typically refers to China, while Zhonghua is more ambiguous term that refers to the "Chinese nation," which exists as an ethnic identity beyond the borders of the People's Republic of China.
"That being said," Sun added. "It is true there is a growing sense of Taiwanese consciousness in recent years as more and more people prefer to identify themselves as Taiwanese instead of Chinese, or both, especially among the younger generation."
Kuo Hsing-Chun and Lu Yen-hsun of Taiwan hold the Chinese Taipei Olympic flag at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics on July 23. © Reuters Taiwan's remarkable showing at the Tokyo Olympics, where it has so far doubled its previous record by landing 11 medals, as of Thursday, has brought the name compromise back into the limelight. Even Japanese broadcaster NHK referred to the island's Olympic team as simply "Taiwan" in its commentary for the opening ceremony.
Whether this will herald any long term changes for Taiwan, however, is still a big question mark, said Lev Nachman, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard's Fairbanks Center. A national referendum on Taiwan's Olympic name narrowly failed in 2018, and if it were to win there are still questions as to whether Taiwan would rather be known as the Republic of China or simply "Taiwan."
That has not stopped legendary Taiwanese Olympian Chi Cheng to announce she would launch another referendum this week to change Taiwan's team name ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to local media.
The International Olympic Committee, however, has told Taiwan's Olympic Committee that it could face consequences if it were to change its name. Past disagreements over Taiwan's name led its team to boycott both the 1976 and 1980 Olympics before its then one-party state agreed on Chinese Taipei.
Taiwan would also have to contend with potential future pressure from China, whose government has been fairly restrained during the current Olympic Games and nods here and there to Taiwan's identity, said Tai Wei Lim, an adjunct research fellow at the National University of Singapore.
"China wants a smooth transition from the Japanese hosts of the summer games to the winter games," he said, which they will host in Beijing next year.
Beijing 2022 is already controversial as Western parliamentarians have called for a boycott due to China's human rights abuses in Xinjiang and its ongoing crackdown on human rights in Hong Kong. Stirring up the Tokyo Olympics, however, could push Japan into that camp as well.
"Beijing does not want to add Japan to the list of what it considered as anti-Winter Olympics Western bloc," he said. "[China] is the host next year and does not want to appear negative in legitimate sports achievements This is in the arena of soft cultural power projection. Any side that appears negative about legitimate sports achievement will lose out," Lim said.
Beijing, however, is unlikely to stay so restrained should Taiwan change its name for the 2022 or 2024 Games.
China Inc. and the country's netizens could also step in to take the place of the government, as well, to silence any support for Team Taiwan. During the Tokyo games, Taiwanese actress Dee Hsu has already lost four endorsement deals from Chinese companies for using the phrase "national athletes" to refer to the Chinese Taipei team in an Instagram post.
Suggesting that Taiwan is a nation or independent country is taboo for global celebrities, brands if they wish to remain in the Chinese market, as Beijing claims the 23-million-strong democracy as its own.