Lawmakers introduce bill to rename Taiwan office in Washington
BY LAURA KELLY
04 FEBRUARY 2022
Bipartisan lawmakers in the House and Senate on Friday introduced legislation to rename Taiwan’s representative office in Washington to better reflect its status as a diplomatic mission.
The move is likely to spark criticism from China, which opposes any efforts by the international community that appears to recognize the self-governing, democratic island as independent from Beijing.
The legislation, called the Taiwan Representative Office Act, would rename the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, D.C., the “Taiwan Representative Office.”
“At a time of unprecedented international tension and as Beijing continues to seek to bully and coerce Taiwan, this important bill demonstrates the United States’ critical support for the people of Taiwan,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement.
The New Jersey senator further said the renaming of the Taiwan office in Washington falls within the Taiwan Relations Act, the 1980 law that lays out the delicate balance of U.S. relations with Taipei without formally recognizing it as a separate nation from the ruling Chinese government in Beijing.
