The Olympic torch relay for the Beijing games next year will travel to Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China considers a renegade province, organizers said on April 26, but Taipei has rejected the idea, saying the plan shows an attempt to downgrade Taiwan’s sovereignty.
There had been debate about whether the torch would pass through Taiwan given the political disagreement about the island’s ultimate status between Beijing and Taipei.
An air of goodwill seems to be behind the Chinese decision to allow the torch to visit Taiwan, which has been split from the mainland since a civil war in China ended in 1949.
The Chinese government said earlier this year a decision on the issue was not expected until the last moment.
In Taipei, however, Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee Chief Tsai Chen-wei told a press conference, “We cannot agree to such a route, which we think is a domestic route aimed at degrading Taiwan’s status. It is unacceptable”
Tsai said his agency is planning to lodge a protest with his Beijing counterpart so as to demonstrate Taipei’s position.
Taiwan’s government noted earlier that the torch may tour the island only if Beijing does not insist on designating it as part of the “domestic route” of the torch relay.
It suggested that the country through which the torch will travel before Taiwan would be Japan, South Korea or a nation in Southeast Asia.
However, as the year-end legislative campaign and the 2008 presidential election has heated up in recent weeks, the government appears to have adopted a harder-line position on this matter, saying Taiwan’s sovereignty must be taken into account while drawing up the map and the result must be conducive to the development of cross-strait relations.
Under these guidelines, it proposed that the flame be allowed to come and go only via a third nation rather than via Chinese cities such as Hong Kong or Macao.
Several radical lawmakers in Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party said Taiwan should not compromise on any routes connecting Taiwan and Chinese cities.
According to the Beijing Olympic organizers, after leaving Beijing next March, the torch will travel to Almaty, in Kazakhstan, Istanbul, St. Petersburg, London and Paris.
It will then travel across the Atlantic Ocean to San Francisco and Buenos Aires in Argentina before crossing the ocean again to Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania and Muscat in Oman.
It will then visit Islamabad, Mumbai, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta before going on to Canberra in Australia and back to Asia to Nagano, Seoul, Pyongyang, Ho Chi Minh City, Taipei, Hong Kong and Macao.
Back on mainland China, it will take in major cities and a number of sites important to the Chinese Communist Party, such as the former revolutionary base area Jinggangshan, according to the organizers.
The organizers also said that they hope to take the torch to the top of Mt. Everest in May next year in what is being billed as the longest Olympic torch relay ever involving the greatest number of people.
The torch itself was also revealed for the first time at the special ceremony held in Beijing to announce the route. The aluminum torch, which is 72 centimeters tall and weighs nearly a kilogram, has a red handle and a traditional Chinese scroll pattern.
Before the unveiling of the torch and its route, Lui Qi, president of the Beijing Olympics’ organizing committee, said, “The Beijing 2008 Olympic torch relay is one of the most important ceremonies and a major means to spread and promote the Olympic spirit.”
“By traveling along the historic ‘Silk Road,’ a symbol of ancient trade links between China and the rest of the world, crossing the five continents and going to new places, the Beijing 2008 torch relay will (bring) friendship and respect to people of different nationalities, races and creeds,” said Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, in his speech at the ceremony.
China’s decision to try to take the torch to the top of Mt. Everest appears in keeping with its desire to make the torch relay a grand event, although the organizers did not promise they would be able to fulfill that goal.
Lhadon Tethong, executive director of U.S.-based rights group Students for a Free Tibet, said around 70 Chinese climbers are currently at Mt. Everest’s base camp about to climb the mountain in a dry run for next year’s torch event.
