The (un)bearable lightness of Chineseness? – Taiwanese national identities and the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics

ABSTRACT

This research examines the controversy caused by Taiwanese speedskater Yu-ting Huang at the Beijing Winter Olympics to analyze the concept of Chineseness on mass media in Taiwan. The videoclip of Huang wearing an outfit of the Chinese national team during training went viral on the social media. The incident triggered a series of chain reactions including her eventual suspension from the national team. However, Huang remained the flagbearer for the parade of nations representing Taiwan in the opening ceremony. The mixed messages were the microcosm of the complex between Taiwan and China and, more importantly, the problematic appropriation of the Chinese diaspora. While Taiwan and China are linguistically, ethnically, culturally proximate, and economically interdependent, Taiwan and China are also politically opposite and militarily hostile. Through Taiwan’s unique perspective, instead of China’s official and controlled channels, the concept of Chinese diaspora and the complex of the cross-strait relations can be further illuminated. While Chinese cultural heritage remains an integral part of Taiwanese identity, it is not an unquestionable and natural weight put on Taiwanese. It is via the narratives of sports that the contrast between Chinese and Taiwanese civil society is highlighted. The self-governing island since 1949 has grown its own unique identity. Chinese diaspora is thus becoming a concept that the island gradually growing out of from. While the construction of identity is always dynamic multi-directional, the dichotomic nature of sports differentiating “us” and “them” has become an indicative field for Taiwanese to construct a unique national identity vis-à-vis China.

KEYWORDS:

• Yu-ting Huang
• Parade of nations
• flagbearer
• Taiwan-China relations

1. Introduction

Taiwan, being a subtropical island, has never been a nation thriving in winter sports. Although Taiwan has consistently attended the Winter Olympics since their readmittance to the IOC under the compromised name “Chinese Taipei” in IOC-sanctioned events since the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, their presence has been marginal. Understandably so, in the past five Winter Olympics dating back from 2006 to 2022, the delegation only consisted of 1, 3, 3, 4, and 4 athletes respectively. However, the coverage of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics was unprecedentedly high. It was not a result of a sudden interest in winter sports but rather an athlete triggering the most sensitive narratives in global sports.

Speedskater Yu-ting Huang, also the designated flagbearer of the Chinese Taipei delegation, posted a controversial video clip on her Instagram page in which she wore an outfit labeled “China” during practice. She was later heavily criticized on social media and by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government. She was eventually suspended for her misconduct. The Sports Administration announced that Huang’s subsidies for training and competition would be revoked for 2 years. To make this a more controversial gesture, it was also the time when China initiated provocative military maneuvers by repeatedly sending their warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.

To say that the cross-strait relations between Taiwan and China are complicated is an utter understatement. In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Mao Zedong, defeated the Nationalist Party (or Kuomintang, KMT), led by Chiang Kai-shek, in the Chinese Civil War that had been ongoing since 1927. As a result of the victory, the CCP established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland, while the KMT retreated to the island of Taiwan and maintained the name Republic of China (ROC). The PRC and Taiwan have been in a state of political tension and military conflict ever since. Over the past seven decades, complicated and inconclusive collective identities have been engendered due to the dynamic civil society emerging from people with vastly different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and political affiliations in Taiwan.

With this as the backdrop, this essay aims to examine the complex Chinese diaspora, particularly from the perspective of Taiwan amid escalating intense global geopolitics. Ever since the rise of China, Taiwan has existed in the shadow of war. Given China’s dubious human rights record and continuous threats of invasion, along with the controversy raised by Huang, the identity of being Taiwanese/Chinese, as portrayed through the lens of the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, has become a heated topic in Taiwan. The position of Taiwan vis-à-vis China is especially delicate, considering their linguistic, ethnic, and cultural proximity, as well as their economic interdependence. Most challenging of all, Taiwan and China are politically opposite and militarily hostile. The controversy surrounding Huang’s videoclip and her awkward presence at the opening ceremony embodies this peculiar relationship. This incident mirrors the ongoing internal conflict among Taiwanese individuals regarding their residual Chineseness. While other aspects of cross-strait relations may have ambiguous areas, the dichotomic nature in sport offered minimal flexibility for Huang amidst the controversy.

2. Literature review

In order to examine the controversy before and at the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics cause by Huang, this essay aims to dissect the spectacle from three dimensions. It starts by reviewing the discussion of sportswashing to shed the light on China’s purpose and agenda in being the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics. Examining the mega-event from this viewpoint is essential, as the host nation aims to convey political messages through the Opening Ceremony for their own interests. For the intended effects to be reached, it requires ongoing diplomacy between governmental and non-governmental entities, in order to generate considerable global interest.¹ This essay then reviews the literature on Chinese diaspora, especially from the perspective of sport – an important vehicle for national identity – to lay the ground for the arguments on the complex of Taiwanese/Chinese. Thirdly, the implications of being Taiwanese in this circumstance is summarized to highlight the overall argument of this essay.

2.1. Sportswashing and China

Sportswashing is a term used to describe autocratic regimes using sport to bolster repression at home and gain influence abroad.² However, the effects of sportswashing can vary depending on the specific circumstances and motivations behind it. For China, ever since the “reform and opening-up” led by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, economic reform and embracing the world was supposed to replace state ownership and central planning. They were also eager to present a brand new image of China to the Western world. Being the host of the 2008 Summer Olympics was set to be the coming-out party for the “New China.” However, they did not exactly get what they wished for. Beijing Summer Olympics failed to win over the hearts of Western publics.³ Manzenreiter argues that China’s insisting on state sovereignty and totalitarian control is hardly appropriate for earning the acclamation by contemporary western publics. In fact, the west still propagated their ideologies in the western mainstream media outlets.

China has utilized the concept of state corporatism to promote its sport development⁴ in the past few decades. With the “Juguo Tizhi” (Whole Nation System) in place, China is supposed to be able to set up of new governmental commercial agencies, updating sport and football regulations, and strengthening Chinese communist ideological education through a centralized apparatus.⁵ However, with the chronic Chinese bureaucratic deficiencies, China’s ambition in sport and the effects of sportswashing along the way is still yet to be fully fulfilled.

According to Skey,⁶ sportswashing has four features:

• [it] focuses on acts of consociation rather than deception. It is designed to build positive associations with a state/country rather than simply conceal

• It is focused on the activities of states and state actors who work with, or alongside, national or supra-national sporting organizations

• Thus far, it has only been used as a pejorative term, much like propaganda, to call into question these activities. This is in contrast to cognate terms, such as soft power or public diplomacy, which are often portrayed as the legitimate actions of states even if they are not viewed as successful

• Up until now, it has only been applied to a narrow range of state actors, all of whom are based outside the West

What distinguishes sportswashing from other forms of the state/sports nexus is that it is primarily a Western perspective that casts suspicion on nations with questionable human rights records and totalitarian governance. It is usually associated with their taking advantage of being the host and controlling the agenda and narratives surrounding the nation. Therefore, sportswashing is supposed to be used as a means to improve a country’s reputation and distract from negative impressions. However, it is worth noting that the term “sportswashing” is often controversial and can be perceived as a means for Western countries to influence public opinion regarding developing nations. On the other hand, while China may characterize these mega-events as a demonstration of their “soft power,” it should not be regarded solely as a Western ideological maneuver against them. Otherwise, it would fall into the trap of relativism and diminish the critical scrutiny of nations using sports to “clean” their international image.⁷

It is worth noting that the Western world is not necessarily at risk of falling into a “trap” set by these “sportswashers” in this regard. The civil society of these democratic countries can be both vulnerable and tenacious at the same time when facing these propaganda. It is important to be aware of the potential for propaganda and manipulation from those sportswashing messages. However, it is also important to be able to think critically and evaluate information objectively in order to make informed decisions and opinions.

Among the messages that the PRC intended to convey to the world, Taiwan’s “reunification” has been a constant theme. Ethnical and cultural proximity have been the main appeals for the claim. Therefore, the concept of Chinese Diaspora and its application to sports will be examined next.

2.2. Chinese diaspora and sports

Since the defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and his KMT fled to Taiwan but still regarded themselves as the lone legitimate representative of China, politically and culturally.⁸ Taiwan has been a part of Chinese diaspora even before that, as Han Chinese in the southeast shore immigrated to the island since the 17^th century, if not earlier.

As migration in the age of globalization becoming important issues, diaspora has become a crucial departing point in examining the phenomenon. Diaspora generally refers to the movement of a group of people across borders, most often national borders, yet still with some degree or economic, familial, or symbolic ties with their homeland. Departing from different or similar academic doctrines, Jewish⁹ and African¹⁰ are among the most extensively searched groups. Chinese diaspora is also gaining the momentum among the academic societies in Europa, America, and Asia including Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia etc.

Among the works, Aihwa Ong¹¹ proposes the concept of flexible citizenship for these transnational subjects. This concept posits economic considerations as the primary factor influencing individuals in their choice of citizenship, rather than identification with a nation based on shared political rights. It has come to symbolize both the fluidity of capital and the tension between national and personal identities. However, these people do not operate in a perfectly free fashion but are “shaped by nation-states and capital markets” (p. 112) at the same time. This is especially important to this essay. These athletes in the Winter Olympics may not be in the same contexts as the investors or managers in Ong’s research. However, they, or their parents, are elite athletes who occupy upper echelon of their inhabiting societies and possess flexibility in constructing their identities as well.

When oversea Chinese achieve certain level of success, the members of the homeland tend to be basked in reflected glory. The reflected glory extends to almost all walks of life, from Nobel laureate (Gao Xingjian, France), pop artists (Coco Lee, USA), Oscar winner (Ang Lee, U.S.A.) to sport stars (Jeremy Lin, U.S.A.).¹² It is not hard to imagine this kind of sentiment toward their black-haired, yellow-skinned “compatriots” as a saying “there are Chinese all over four seas” is widely educated and believed among culturally Chinese societies. It is this sentiment that enable the PRC to propagate their agenda and beckon these diasporic people’s identity toward their imaginary homeland. Even the school of Chinese Diaspora Studies more or less stresses the so-called homeland culture and its importance for overseas Chinese. To avoid the sentiment of nostalgia, E.K. Tan argues that the evolution of tradition should be more stressed than the Chinese tradition per se. In so doing, a “translational Sinophone identity” can thus be built and to avoid fall prey to a nostalgia which cannot be fulfilled.¹³ For later generations of immigrants, they do not have to carry the burden of a “nostalgia without memory.”¹⁴ For these generations, they have been constantly tethered to Mainland China as their ultimate homeland, even without setting a foot on it. In its conventional connotation, hua-chiao, or overseas Chinese, implies a single monolithic Chinese diaspora, in which all Chinese in the world were “spread out” from the middle, Middle Kingdom, that is. That all overseas Chinese are just guests in their foreign residence is the kind of ideology the PRC would love to embrace and maneuver.¹⁵

In Chinese discourse, of course, this is eminently represented by the enduring myth of the unity of the Chinese people as children of the Yellow Emperor … the “myth of consanguinity” has very real effects on the self-conception of diasporic subjects, as it provides them with a magical solution to the sense of dislocation and rootlessness that many of them experience in their lives.¹⁶

Ang also reminds us that “‘China’ can no longer be limited to the more or less fixed area of its official spatial and cultural boundaries, nor can it be held up as providing the authentic, authoritative, and uncontested standard for all things Chinese.” That is a timely reminder that Taiwan, even as a huge part of Chinese diaspora, has developed a distinct culture of their own, despite of still being influenced by the inherited Chinese culture, especially propagated by the ideological state apparatuses erected by the KMT since 1945.

Therefore, if we attempt to understand personal identity of the diasporic Chinese, narratives of “offsprings of the Yellow Emperor” would predetermine the subjects’ singular and monolithic Chineseness. An individualistic and authentic narratives would be hindered. With global movements of population, it is route, instead of root, should be examined with dwelling-in-traveling and traveling-in-dwelling coming to shape personal experience.¹⁷ With this in mind, conventional “fallen leaves returning to their roots” (luoye guigen) mentality should be replaced by “sinking root where you live” (luodi shenggen) in order to highlight the contemporary Chinese diaspora.

In the terrain of sport, the plurality of culture and identity is less applicable. The “either-or,” “we-vs-they” dichotomy leaves little gray zone in sport. Of the Chinese athletes, table tennis players are among the most emigrated ones. During the period 1988 to 2020, 811 athletes participated in the Olympic Games. A total of 127 China-born table tennis players represented countries other than China at the Olympics. Collectively, these China-born athletes have officially earned their new nations eight silver and seven bronze .¹⁸ Among them, Chen Jing was the most intriguing figure. In 1991, she defected to Taiwan after failing to make the national team in 1990 in China. Representing Taiwan, she won a silver and a bronze medal at the 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics respectively. When former volleyball superstar Lang Ping coached the USA women’s national team and beat her homeland China in the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008, “traitor” was the label she had to bear¹⁹ but redeemed herself by leading the Chinese women’s national team winning the gold medal in the Rio Summer Olympics in 2016. In the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, three US-born athletes Chu Yi, Nathan Chen and Eileen Gu were portrayed as “shame,” “traitor” and “hero,” respectively, due to their different paths of “homecoming,” the nations they elected to present and the results of their performance.²⁰

2.3. Taiwan’s (unbearable) lightness of chineseness

Taiwan, as a Chinese diaspora society, carries multiple colonial legacies and maintains an intricate relationship with China. This relationship, particularly intensified since China’s “reform and opening-up” in the late 1970s, is characterized by a blend of hostility and dependence. The nascent identity shaping of the Taiwanese nation has been greatly influenced by the “multiple colonial structures” of Taiwan’s internal dynamics among different immigrant groups and the external process of globalization. The characteristics of Taiwan being an immigrant society can be traced back to the Japanese colonial period. The identity was gradually formed due to the invasion of foreign regimes. Even sporadic, guerrilla-style armed anti-Japanese actions also laid out the struggle between the “we-group” and others. traces of. The “February 28 Incident” in 1947²¹ dealt another blow and setback to Taiwan’s national self-determination expectations, and the resistance to foreign regimes became the driving force for Taiwan’s identity. Even under the authoritarian rule of the KMT, surging Taiwanese nationalism began to rival the assumed and the “official” Chinese nationalism²² after numerous protests and social movements demanding democracy and safeguarding Taiwanese culture.

This dialectical dynamic process and conflicting national imageries are all ingredients of the diversified, ever-changing, yet confusing and unstable characteristics of the national identity of Taiwan. A universally accepted grand-narrative on Taiwan being a nation has never completed. A truly “postmodern nation.”²³ Taiwan’s international diplomatic standing faces significant challenges due to pressure from the PRC. This situation underscores Taiwan’s pressing necessity for a discourse that defines its national identity. The pursuit of a “unanimous” national identity, even if it represents just a temporary majority consensus, becomes crucial to assert Taiwan’s position globally. The connection between national identity and sport emerges as a primary avenue for Taiwan to communicate its existence and status to the world. The awkward and compromised name in “Chinese Taipei” and the so-called “Olympic Formula” embody the very complex reality.²⁴ It is obvious that Taiwanese nationalism is an unfinished project. In the process, sport often becomes a vehicle for Taiwanese society to call for consistent things and gather a sense of commonality.

Filmmaker Chuan Chung’s documentary The Affairs of Three Cities: The Game is an important artifact highlighting the tension and delicacy of Taiwan’s national identity waving between their two “homelands.” He chose three matchups to embody the complex. One is the Championship game between China and Japan in the Asian Cup 2004. The other one is the Taiwan-Japan baseball game in the Athens Olympics. The third one is the Taiwan-China game in the inaugural World Baseball Classic. “Who do you root for between Japan and China?” became a very sensitive question. Among the interviewees, Japan was the predominant answer. The result and narrative of the documentary highlight that China is an omnipresent, outside, yet significant other for Taiwan.

Sport seems to be able to unite Taiwan’s disparate and divergent identities under one flag (albeit a negotiated and controversial Olympic flag with five rings), but the decentralized and unstable quality of the nation embodies the characteristic of today’s Taiwanese identity. This research would further examine the national identity constructed by sport, including the parade of nations in the Beijing Winter Olympics and controversial surrounding one of their elite athletes. While the narratives of sport can unite diverse and heterogeneous individuals and groups through collective effervescence, it can also divide a nation with diversified political and cultural imaginations.

3. Methods

This essay adopts critical discourse analysis on the coverage of the opening ceremony, especially surrounding the controversy caused by Yu-ting Huang. Overall, 48 stories and the comments by readers across different media platforms were collected from 23 January 2022 to 24 September 2022, the dates when Huang posted the controversial videoclip and her latest public appearance when endorsing a Chinese clothing brand FIZZCOCO.

During the period, stories with keywords including Yu-ting Huang, Winter Olympics, and Beijing Olympics were included along the video of the opening ceremony for critical discourse analysis. The texts selected are not necessarily from the conventional news outlets such as newspaper, television news channels or their websites. To adapt to the contemporary information landscape, this essay incorporates narratives and posts sourced from social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, it integrates comments from the Parade of Nations found on ELTA Sports’ YouTube channel, the official Taiwanese Olympic broadcaster. Unlike many other countries, Twitter is not a major social media in Taiwan. It is therefore not included in this analysis. According to Datareportal, there are only 2.7 million Twitter users while Facebook and Instagram have 16.35 million and 10.55 million, respectively, registered in Taiwan. Social media is no longer an alternative news outlet. Practically speaking, they are widely quoted by “mainstream” news media whenever deemed newsworthy.²⁵ The data were collected for analysis from the perspective of cross-strait relations between Taiwan and China through the lens of the controversy of Yu-ting Huang caused in 2022.

4. Analysis

4.1. The gathering storm

Sportswashing has been a common tactic for countries and cooperates with dubious human rights records, among other shady scandals. Hosting mega sporting events such as two Olympic Games was used by the Chinese government to showcase the country’s economic progress, technological advancements, and cultural heritage, while diverting attention from human rights concerns, such as its track record on censorship, freedom of expression, and mistreatment of ethnic minorities like Uighur Muslims. The sportswashing scheme not only go outward for international propaganda. It also runs inward for nationalistic narratives and media control. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, a football “Chinese dream” has been one of the forefront tasks in sport.²⁶ Under Chinese state corporatism, investing in foreign sports teams and leagues has been adopted as a key tactic. The tactic was especially popular in the mid-2010s. During 2015 and 2016 alone, prominent European football clubs such as AC Milan, Inter Milan, Atletico Madrid and Wolverhampton were acquired by Chinese corporates. Chinese corporates are also major players in sports sponsorship. Alibaba has been the top-tiered Olympic sponsor (The Olympic Partner, TOP) since 2017. The sponsorship will run through 2028. China Mengniu Dairy’s joint sponsorship with the IOC, along with Coca-Cola, will run through 2032. Mengniu also became a major sponsor in the Qatar World Cup. Other than that, when Beijing bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics, they beat Almaty, Kazakhstan by a narrow margin 44–40 on 31 July 2015. That was two years after Xi being President of the PRC.

Before the Beijing Winter Olympics, western countries voiced their concerns over the human rights of the PRC, especially the allegation of their racial cleansing of Muslims in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region by diminishing their social, theocratic, and cultural uniqueness.²⁷ In addition to that, the #WhereIsPengShuai incident and the restriction of the freedom of people in Hong Kong through new legislation in the Hong Kong National Security Law in 2020 further deepened the concerns over human rights in the Chinese territories. In order to prevent PRC from sportswashing their tainted international images, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada declared a diplomatic boycott, along with Australia, Belgium, Lithuania, Denmark and Estonia, etc. While athletes from these counties still competed in the Olympics, no ministers or officials attended the games or ceremonies. UK MP Iain Duncan Smith, who represented the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, further accused the PRC of sending “near-daily military incursions into Taiwan’s airspace”.²⁸

Under the circumstances, China’s stance against the West was unwavering throughout the Beijing Winter Olympics. They even got the support from the IOC, as President Thomas Bach constantly defended the PRC from various questions. He claimed that he had seen “the dark clouds of the growing politicization of sport on the horizon.” He even further condemned the actions from the Western countries:

We also saw that in some peoples’ minds the boycott ghosts of the past were rearing their ugly heads again.²⁹

With the support from the IOC, before the eventual invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping met hours before the opening ceremony and backed each other over standoffs on Ukraine and Taiwan with a promise to collaborate more against the west. In order to counter the Russia-China’s joint statement, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs hit back by saying that

it not only increases the Taiwanese people’s disgust at and loathing for the Chinese government’s arrogance and bullying. It also clearly shows all the world’s countries the sinister face of the Chinese Communist regime’s aggression, expansionism and damaging of peace.³⁰

For Taiwanese under constant threat from their hostile neighbor, it is understandable the collective discontent and anger against the regime, despite of intimate cultural and economic bonds. While the geopolitical tension had reached an apex prior to the Winter Olympics, there was little report on Taiwanese athletes in the Winter Olympics in mass media until an unexpected video surfaced on the Internet.

A videoclip of Yu-ting Huang skating with the PRC team outfit with its national flag and CHN label was post on her Instagram page on 23 January 2022 while she was training and preparing for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. However, the videoclip did not get public attention until February 2, two days before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. As said in the beginning of the essay, winter sports are not popular at all in Taiwan. The fact that Huang did not get substantial attention is not a surprise. Among the Winter Olympians, Huang was the most known among the delegates for her past success in inline speed skating. Huang won three gold medals at the 2009 World Games in Kaohsiung, Taiwan representing the Chinese Taipei team and earned her the nickname “speedskating sweetheart.”

In response to the swarming criticism and attacks, Huang responded by claiming that the outfit was a gift from an athlete on the Chinese team, whom she befriended in Germany. She also posted a story of the Taylor Swift music video, “Shake It Off” which is famed for its lyrics, “Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate,” on Instagram. She wrote alongside the video, “My dear haters, this song is for you.”

Based on the response, it is obvious that Huang was reluctant to show any intent to back down from her strong stance. However, not long after, she removed the videoclip and posted a message with a much softer tone,

Thank everyone who cheered me up…I have removed the video due to too many unnecessary private messages! Sport is sport. We do not differentiate between nationalities in sports. When not competing in the games, we all are good friends.

However, the post from a moral high ground did not get fine response from the provoked Taiwanese.

You are representing Taiwan…how come there is no difference of nationality. Do you know what you are talking about? ³¹

Comment like this is one of the most common sentiments responded to the news. While most Taiwanese are extremely familiar with Avery Brundage’s famous “There is no place for politics in sports” quote (it is often referred as “sport is sport, politics is politics” in Mandarin), they also realize that their very own presence in the Olympics is political maneuver par excellence. Therefore, sensitivity for politics is almost basic knowledge for Taiwanese. Huang’s statement is also easily rebutted by oppositions. Democratic Progressive Party legislator Lin Jingyi lamented,

Anyone can be a good friend with any foreigner. As a national team, however, do think about “that country” marked on the clothes you casually worn. It is the country that prevents you from competing with your own nation’s name. Even if you win the championship, you can only raise the Olympics flag and anthem. That country prohibits you from participating in international competitions, blocking you from being an ordinary athlete.³²

The controversy did not cease as Huang was also the flagbearer for the small delegate of Chinese Taipei. Being the most known athlete on the squad, Huang’s appointment was a reasonable choice. However, after the outfit controversy boiling up, Huang was not an appropriate flagbearer anymore. Shih-chieh Liu, a former diplomat of Taiwan, commented that

It is very inappropriate to wear the clothes of an enemy country when shooting a video on the eve of the Olympics. Even if we reluctantly accept that this is a mindless or even inadvertent mistake, is the athlete involved still qualified to be the flag bearer in the opening ceremony?…. Please do not embarrass Taiwan.³³

The comment was widely quoted by the major news outlets. It is the general consensus among the citizens with Taiwanese consciousness. With all the controversy before the opening ceremony, it was arguably the most noted Winter Olympics in Taiwanese history. What would the Sports Administration and the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee (CTOC) do? Would Huang still be the flagbearer after all the controversy? However, despite of the plea and the request by some notable politicians, the incident came so close to the opening ceremony, the CTOC did not have time to replace her. Whether the CTOC intended to replace her or not was unclear. There were numerous different sources cited for different reactions. According to NOWNews, Huang was not replaced due to the pressure from the IOC.³⁴ However, ETToday reported that it was the government’s call to not take any further actions until after the Winter Olympics.³⁵ The real reason of not removing Huang as the flagbearer immediately would not be known. The (in)decision further embodies the delicacy of the tangled relations between Taiwan and China in sport.

4.2. The parade and the opening ceremony

Opening Ceremony is constantly staged as the main attraction of the Olympics. Being set in the COVID-19 Pandemic, it is performed in front of the mostly empty stadium. It is a media spectacle par excellence. C. C. Chen, Colapinto, and Luo argues that China used the 2008 Olympics as a tool in the soft power and international communication strategy they have been pursuing over years.³⁶ The campaign worked both domestically and externally attempting to build China’s national identity and image in the world. This soft power agenda had its internal targets too. It sent messages to ordinary Chinese people about their country and their place within it. However, 14 years later, the role of China in the world and their attitude toward it has evolved vastly.

The opening ceremony was co-broadcasted by Taiwan Public Television Service (PTS) and IPTV channel ELTA Sports with PTS relaying the identical images and audio commentary.

With the whole world sharing the same universal feed, it is understandable that the Taiwanese delegate would not be a main attraction. In fact, the three-person delegate was on the screen for merely 31 s. The male anchor started the session by saying excitedly, “this is our country!” when Chinese Taipei entered in the Parade of Nations (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIxvXt2DSEs).

Female anchor: As you can see, we entered as the eleventh nation. The female flagbearer is speedskater Yu-ting Huang. The male flagbearer is skier Ping-jui Ho. There are four athletes representing Taiwan to compete in this Winter Olympics. In addition to Huang and Ho, there are also female luger Sin-rong Lin and female skier Wen-yi Lee.

Male anchor: yes, there are four athletes expediting to Beijing for the Olympics

The 31-s screen time was so short that even the Taiwan’s own broadcast team could not elaborate much on the controversy per se. It does not mean that they would have done so with more time to comment though. Taiwanese broadcasters typically stayed neutral on controversial topics in sports broadcast. It was only reasonable that they just introduced the delegate. Nothing more. Nothing less. However, it is worth noting that the TV broadcaster Elta Sports superimposed “Taiwan” in Chinese characters at the bottom-left corner of the screen, after the English “Chinese Taipei” shown in the screen for the broadcast. Surrounded by the turmoil she started, Yu-ting Huang was visibly nervous despite of her face covered by mask amid COVID-19 concern. Huang and her co-flagbearer Ping-jui Ho held the flagpole together awkwardly. It only lasted 31-second long, but the tension was everlasting.

The political connotations of the ceremony were more than Yu-ting Huang and the Parade of Nations. After the athletes entered the stadium, a video montage of children as the “Champions of Tomorrow” was shown, along with the performance by 91 children symbolizing 91 participating countries. At the end of the segment, these children surrounded a massive snowflake in a heart-shaped formation while singing. While a little girl seemed to be lost and left out of the formation, another one went to pick her hand and “reunited” with the group. The scene was interpreted in a highly political connotation. It symbolized Taiwan’s eventual reunification with mainland (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUs0iL5QOVI&t=8010s).

Prior to the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese government was beleaguered for the allegation on forced labor, mass detention, and religious repression in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region for the past few years. It resembled the overture of the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008 when China was also marred in the human rights issues in Tibet and the involvement of Darfur War as an arms supplier to the Sudanese government. Along with their continuous threats on Taiwan, the mutual trust between the Western democratic countries and China diminished further. By comparing the two Beijing Olympics, China’s stance on how to respond to these critiques differed drastically. The Chinese government took a number of steps back to address concerns about its human rights record in the lead-up to the games, including releasing some political prisoners and making other concessions in 2008. However, they did not make the similar compromise. Instead, China made Uygur cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang one of the two last torch bearers lighting the Olympic cauldron. That was a direct response from the PRC to the West, who have been constantly attacking on China’s human rights record, especially on various violation again humanity in Xinjiang.

4.3. The aftermath

The opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics was an obvious political propaganda for China amid geopolitical tensions and pressure from the western countries. At the meantime, Taiwan was caught in an awkward position. They were, on one hand, the fortress on the frontline of anti-China alliance. On the other hand, one of their own elite athletes was “showing off” her PRC outfit. Although Taiwanese have been leaning toward identifying themselves as Taiwanese solely (62.8%), instead of both Chinese and Taiwanese (30.5%), starting from 2007, according to the long-running poll conducted by the Election Study Center of National Cheng-chi University,³⁷ the majority of the population (60.7%) still prefers the ambiguous status quo (including both “Maintain status quo, decide at later date” and “Maintain status quo indefinitely” options) to leaning toward an independent state (25.9%)³⁸ under the shadow of military threats from China.

The poll shows that even though Taiwanese nationalism has been growing, the risk of irritating China and the consequential threat of being invaded still hinder Taiwanese’s pursuit of a truly independent and recognized state in the world. Meanwhile, despite of being politically opposite, China is Taiwan’s most important trade partners in the world, with 38.8% of their total exports contributed by China.³⁹ After Huang’s outfit controversy, the ties between China and her family were revealed. Yu-ting Huang and her coach/father Chin-lung Huang were the endorsers for the Chinese brand SkatingStart since 2016. The HOPE series of the product line is named after Yu-ting Huang’s English name.

After the distraction of the incident, Huang finished worse than expected. She finished 26^th, 24^th and 26^th in the women’s 500, 1000, 1500 m events, respectively. After she finished the event of 1500 m, the DJ of the venue orchestrated to play the song Mandarin by popular Taiwanese trio S.H.E. She was interviewed by Beijing Daily and saying “feeling like competing at home.”⁴⁰ The interview further alienated Huang from her Taiwanese compatriots and left the Sports Administration and the CTOC no choice but to announced on February 18^th that Huang would be replaced by slalom skier Wen-yi Lee in the closing ceremony.⁴¹ Huang did not come back to Taiwan with the delegate after the Olympics. Instead, she traveled to the training facility in the United States “to prepare” for the coming competition in March, 2022 in Europe .⁴²

On 3 March 2022, the Sports Administration announced that it would suspend Huang’s subsidies for training and competition for 2 years. This would be Huang’s ultimate sentence for the outfit incident. She did not make public appearance for almost 7 months. Her last public appearance was the press conference for her endorsement of Chinese sportswear FIZZCOCO on 23 September 2022. The brand was almost unknown for most Taiwanese. Another Chinese connection did not help clear her name in her homeland. It is obvious that she did not distance herself with China throughout the whole incident, not even in the aftermath.

5. Whose flagbearer is she? – as a conclusion

The outfit controversy caused by Yu-ting Huang is a microcosm of Taiwanese’ struggle with their Chineseness. While there are gray zones in other dimensions of cross-strait relations, the us/them dichotomy of sports left very little wiggle room for Huang amid the controversy. On one hand, it is the heritage of the Chinese Civil War and the subsequent Chinese Diaspora that all Taiwanese has inherited collectively since the Second World War ended in 1945 and further tangled in 1949, when the KMT fled to the island after losing the war against Mao’s communists. On the other hand, the consciousness of being a Taiwanese, transitioning from Chinese to both Taiwanese and Chinese, gradually gaining momentum in the past decades, especially after the termination of the world’s longest Martial Law governance (1949–1987). The displaced “mainlanders” and the inhabitant “islanders” collided at the island. One part of the population never regarded the island home and felt traumatized of living in exile and holding everlasting yet unfulfilled dreams of “homecomings” for four decades, the trauma even passed along to their offspring. Meanwhile, the islanders were viewed by the exile regime as the uncivilized secondary citizens who were governed by the Japanese colonizer. The inevitable conflict “February 28 Incident” erupted in 1947. The aftermath of the conflict left a lasting scar on the people of the island at that time and generations to come.

For Taiwanese, Yu-ting Huang’s outfit incident is a chance to reflect their identities toward China. For Huang family and about 30% of people living on the island regarding themselves as both Chinese and Taiwanese, it is not a distinctive dichotomy between the two cross-strait rivals. However, for majority of Taiwanese, China represents the biggest threat and eager to keep cultural distinction between the two. Z. Liu, Chen, and Newman argue that the western media, especially those who echoed the Trumpist ideology tended to channel their hyperbole criticism against China through the failure of Chinese football in particular and in sports in general.⁴³ This may be the kind of sentiment that falls into the trap of cultural relativism. It fails to grasp the global geopolitical dynamics, especially from Taiwan’s perspective, who are the closest and the most familiar “other” to China. With China’s attempt to sportswash their tainted international image through the schemes plotted in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Taiwan’s distinctive geographical location and diplomatic perspective should not be overlooked by the world. With the tangled diaspora since 1949, Taiwan has developed a way to position themselves in order to respond to the challenges throwing at them from their mightier rival across Taiwan Strait.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science and Technology Council [108-2628-H-179-001-MY2].

Notes on contributors

Tzu-Hsuan Chen

Tzu-hsuan Chen is Professor at National Taiwan Sport University. He is the current President of Taiwan Society of Sport Sociology. His research interests focus on sport and mass media, globalization, fan culture and nationalism.

Notes

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6. Skey, Sportswashing: Media Headline or Analytic Concept? 749–764.

7. For example, Qatar hosting the World Cup and Saudi Arabia’s increasing role in international sports, such as football, auto racing, tennis and golf, are perfect examples for sportswashing their dubious human rights record and mistreatment of women.

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21. The February 28 Incident was a traumatic event in the history of Taiwan that occurred in 1947. The discontent erupted into widespread protests and conflicts between Taiwanese and the KMT-led military and police force. It was on that day that martial law was declared by the KMT government and eventually lasted for 37 years. During the time, brutal crackdown, mass arrests, executions, and suppression of dissent were enforced.

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32. Seehttps://www.facebook.com/LinCYminorta/posts/pfbid02Czb7dYezLTyziXRQtg5iDvigkVgpEWDxX6jbDP5VKxSkwhPSoRmcFdFrcFbN41K6l.

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37. Source: https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7804&id=6960.

38. Source: https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7805&id=6962.

39. Source: Ministry of Economic Affairs (retrieved from https://www.ey.gov.tw/state/6A206590076F7EF/8b5032af-1a67-4c02-bd16-8791aa459cd2).

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