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Olympic and Sporting flags (Taiwan)

Overview

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Overview

Taiwan adopted the plum blossom as its national flower on 21 July 1964, according to their yearbook 2006.
In 1959, the IOC decided it would no longer accept two NOC-s under the name of "China", and withdrew recognition for the one organising sports in the smaller territory. The next year, it recognised that NOC again, basically under the new name of "Taiwan", and later under that of "Republic of China". In the period 1979-1981, after a lot more of all parties believing they were right, which usually means all of them are wrong, the IOC came to the decision to continue to recognise the NOC seated in Taipei, but under again a different name, "Chinese Taipei", and provided it used for the Olympic Games a different set of emblem, flag and anthem than it had previously.
The heart of the affair must have been that somebody had complained about the history of those symbols. As it was at that time made possible for the teams to use a different flag from their national flag, which also played its part in Moscow 1980, the Taiwan Olympic Committee would therefore have used a flag with their emblem, had they been allowed. The emblem they used at that time was: Their national flower, the plum blossom, as an outline with within, from top to bottom, the national flag, the Olympic Symbol, the name "Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee" in Chinese characters, and the abbreviation "CTPOC". I don't know whether they used it on a flag at the time, or whether they are still using it nationally.
This, apparently was not acceptable either, as there was still a tiny flag in there. So, the next proposal was to have as a white flag with on it an emblem consisting of a plum blossom outline in the national colours, blue, white, red, and within the outline a round blue sky white sun symbol above the Olympic Symbol. This, then was considered acceptable. (The emblem on its own was proposed to have a red background, but somebody vetoed that.)
As other international sports organisations followed the decision of the IOC, Taiwan is represented in each of those with such a flag too. The actual flags vary in that below the sun they shows an emblem for the sports federation concerned, and in one case that I know of the colour of the field is different as well.
I do know more about the history, especially who else were involved in it, since I had a solid, and quite biased source for it: He Zhenliang and China's Olympic Dream. However, I really dislike going into the details.
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 12 April 2012

Interesting. I would suppose Taiwan is the only country which has different "national flags" depending on what sport and competition is played. It's all political of course, they can't use the Republic of China flag.
Elias Granqvist, 02 March 2014

The flag of the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee (CTOC) is used so far to represent the Taiwan (Republic of China) sports bodies for all sporting events except the following ones:
- Paralympic Games
- Universiade and
- Deaflympics
All other national sports representations fly the CTOC flag at international sport events, such as:
- Olympic Games
- FIFA World Cup (Football)
- World Baseball Classic (Baseball)
- IAAF Athletics World Championships (Athletics)
- FINA World Aquatics Championships (Swimming, diving, syncro, open water)
- FIBA World Championships (Basketball)
- FIVB Championships (Volleyball) and so on.
It does not mean that every Chinese Taipei National Sports Federation does not have a flag and emblem for its own, nevertheless such emblem or flag does not represent the national team or representation in its corresponding world, continental or regional sports event. It seems that the flags shown about tawkwondo, football and volleyball are actualy the national federation’s flags.
Juan Manuel Gabino Villascán, 03 March 2014