Regarding the issue of the Russian Olympic Committee’s flag appearing next to our country name’s abbreviation #ROC within official Kuomintang (KMT) tweets, the KMT states that Twitter frequently goes along with the latest trends and pushes built-in symbols to go along with hashtags. This time, when tagging #ROC, the Russian Olympic Committee’s flag appears. Furthermore, this appearance of that flag applies retroactively, and thus the Russian Olympic Committee’s flag appears even on President Tsai’s official 2017 tweet when she tagged #ROC. The KMT emphasizes that this is Twitter’s official systematic process, but the ROC has always signified the English abbreviation for the Republic of China. The Tsai administration should not ignore this issue. It should express our solemn concerns to Twitter and request that Twitter makes appropriate revisions regarding this issue.
The KMT emphasizes that the Russian team was unable to compete in the Olympics under the name of its country, and they thus competed with the name Russian Olympic Committee instead; the English abbreviation of this name and the English abbreviation of our nation are both ROC. Furthermore, this time Twitter has automatically attached the Russian Olympic Committee flag to #ROC throughout its entire system, not only in new tweets, but all past tweets containing #ROC also have had the Russian Olympic Committee flag attached to them. This has truly caused a complex situation for our compatriots and other relevant parties when tagging #ROC on Twitter; it has also caused confusion on the international stage.
The KMT states that ROC is the abbreviation of our English name the Republic of China. Our nation’s people and government officials use the ROC abbreviation to represent our nation in foreign relations, so much so that the “ROC” in our nation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Twitter account “Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC” represents the English abbreviation of our nation’s official name. This Twitter incident has not only caused President Tsai Ing-wen’s past official tweets to display the Russian Olympic Committee flag next to #ROC, the tweets of non-governmental organizations, such as Apple Daily, the Voice of America, and other media outlets, to also suffer the same fate.
The KMT emphasizes that Twitter’s automated system wasn’t the result of deliberate efforts, but the Tsai Ing-wen administration, confronted with the appearance of another flag next to the abbreviation of our nation’s official name, should express deep concerns and request that Twitter makes suitable revisions to its system. In this way, inconvenience and confusion regarding our nation’s official title among the international community can be avoided when our compatriots use Twitter.
