Lawmakers introduce bill to rename Taiwan office in Washington

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. 

Menendez said that it is “​​Taiwan’s right, consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, to determine its own future and to be able to enjoy greater respect and diplomatic space as a member of the international community.”

The U.S. has informal diplomatic relations with Taipei but is an important supplier of defensive military arms to bolster the island’s ability to protect itself from a possible invasion by Beijing.

The legislation also seeks to express U.S. solidarity with Lithuania, a NATO ally that has found itself under a campaign of economic coercion and public denouncement from Beijing over its decision to upgrade relations with Taiwan.

The Chinese government recalled its ambassador to Vilnius, downgraded its diplomatic relations and barred imports to China from Lithuania after Vilnius allowed the Taipei representative office to use the name “Taiwan” in its mission, instead of the Beijing-approved “Chinese Taipei.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), the bill’s Republican co-sponsor and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Taiwan an “indispensable partner of the United States and an exemplary beacon of democracy in the Indo-Pacific region.” 

“The U.S. must make clear that, despite all efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to intimidate and coerce Taiwan, hostile powers have no right to claim sovereignty over democratic countries,” he said.

The bill was introduced in the House by Reps. John Curtis (R-Utah) and Chris Pappas (D-N.H.).

The administration and lawmakers have raised warnings that a Chinese invasion across the Taiwan Strait is an increasingly likely scenario given soaring tensions between the U.S. and China, in particular, and Beijing’s increasingly assertive stance on the world stage and against Western nations and democracies. 

Further, China’s support for Russia’s buildup of troops on Ukraine’s border for what Moscow says is self-defense, but that the U.S. and West say is an unacceptable threat to a sovereign state, has further raised concern that Beijing is laying the groundwork to justify taking the island by force.

U.S. policy is to support Taiwan as an important democracy in the Indo-Pacific but not formally recognize the government in Taipei, saying it supports diplomatic talks with Beijing for a negotiated solution between the two parties.

The government in Taipei, which calls itself the Republic of China, fled to the island in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to what would become the government in Beijing, called the People’s Republic of China.