Republic of China at the Olympics


The Republic of China participated in its first Summer Olympics in 1932 under the name of China. After the Chinese Civil War the ROC retreated to the island of Taiwan, and only Taiwan-based athletes have competed on behalf of the country since then. The ROC protested the 1979 Nagoya Resolution by boycotting the 1976 Summer Olympics; this continued until the ROC competed under the deliberately ambiguous name Chinese Taipei in the 1984 Winter Olympics. China also took part in the Opening Ceremony of the 1924 Summer Olympics, but its four athletes withdrew from competition.

Medal tables

Medals by Summer Games

The Nagoya Resolution

Overview

The Nagoya Resolution brought about the participation of the PRC in Olympic Games activities by designating that the Republic of China would be identified as Chinese Taipei and any identifying flag, anthem, or emblem used in Olympic activities would be without symbolism to show the existence of the ROC and demonstrate its sovereign nation status.
A number of previous IOC actions enabled the IOC to include both the PRC and the ROC in Olympic activities despite the attempts by the former to argue that the ROC identity be as a subordinate branch of the PRC NOC. The PRC objected to the ROC NOC having that designation because it included the word "national", and the PRC did not recognize it as a nation. The solution to that issue was the IOC Charter provision that a country or nation designation could also include geographical area, district or territory. The 1997 revision of the IOC charter reinforced the legitimacy of some form of a ROC NOC being recognized, as the IOC Charter was clarified to define the term "country" as an independent state with international recognition.
Also, a retroactive action to remove recognition of an existing NOC was prohibited by a 1996 IOC Session action.. Nevertheless, the PRC sought to equate the status of the ROC NOC with that of the Hong Kong NOC, and the IOC charter prohibited any subordinate territory from acting on its own without authority from its country's NOC. The ROC NOC reasserted its independent spirit by bidding for the 2010 Asian Games and the Olympic Games; both were rejected but the ROC bid for the World Games in Kaohsiung was accepted. It is interesting to understand that according to the policy that the PRC attempted to reinforce, Macau would have the right to an IOC-recognized NOC, but whilst the ROC and Hong Kong NOC's existed and were recognized previous to 1997, Macau's NOC has never been recognized by the IOC.
The ROC NOC took the issue to a Swiss court and the case was dismissed."

Resolution language: French and English versus Chinese

The official use of French and English to compose the Nagoya Resolution made its translation in Chinese a quandary when it came to the 1990 Asian Games, as expressed by the IOC member from the PRC. He Zhenliang said that the PRC had always translated “Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee” as Zhongguo Taibei Aoweihui and ROC translated it as Zhonghua Taibei Aoweihui. There was no problem when both the ROC and PRC were involved in the same event in other Chinese language countries as the names would be spelled phonetically according to the host language. But the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing resurrected the issue over the one Chinese character differential in each name: the PRC translation of "Zhongguo" and the ROC translation "Zhonghua".
He believed that the actual objection by the ROC was that acceptance of the PRC interpretation was tantamount to being "roped into a local organ of the Zhongguo Olympic Committee." He said that the PRC decided that the "principle of the “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan” was not involved and agreed to the ROC name interpretation.

Torch relay route

The ROC sought to differentiate itself from the PRC when the Torch Relay route was announced for the 2008 Summer Olympics; The ROC insisted that the route both entering and exiting the ROC could not be directly from or to PRC territory as that might give the impression that the ROC was part of the PRC.