Taiwan’s Premier Su Tseng-chang has ordered an investigation into a Taiwan speed skating Olympian over her alleged “misconduct” of wearing the Chinese team uniform early this month and her subsequent “inappropriate” remarks, according to Taiwan’s state-run Central News Agency (CNA).
Huang Yu-Ting, who represents Taiwan in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, attracted fury on social media for wearing the Chinese team uniform during a practice session, as seen on a video she posted – and later took down – on her Instagram account.
“Huang’s donning of the Chinese team uniform and her subsequent remarks do not meet people’s expectations of national team athletes,” CNA reported, citing Taiwanese Executive Yuan spokesperson Lo Ping-Cheng. “Athletes on the national team…should not engage in any controversial acts that would tarnish national honor.”
Premier Su has asked the Ministry of Education and the Sports Administration to probe Huang’s misconducts, and draw up rules of conducts for national team athletes to follow in the future.
At the time, Huang said the uniform was given to her by a “good Chinese skater friend” with whom she trained in Germany.
“Sports belong to sports. In sports we know no nations,” Huang wrote on her Facebook.
Netizens responded by calling her “ignorant” in response to her post.
“Give your [Taiwan] uniform to the Chinese national team, whom you call ‘good friends off the circuit’ and make them take a video and upload it. Then you’ll know if they are as clueless as you are,” a social media user who went by the name Wu Tzu-Yun responded on Facebook.
On Thursday after she finished competing, Huang took to Facebook and wrote in a sarcastic tone “all the haters please leave a comment below. Those who [are] support[ing] me, please don’t leave a comment, just like the post.” The post attracted approximately 2,900 angry emojis.
Here’s some background: Taiwan is diplomatically boycotting the Beijing 2022 Games. Taiwan and mainland China have been separately governed since the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese civil war more than 70 years ago.
Taiwan is now a flourishing democracy but the mainland’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to view the island as an inseparable part of its territory — despite having never controlled it.
Today, relations between Taipei and Beijing are at their lowest point in decades. Earlier this month, China’s military sent a record number of warplanes into the air around Taiwan.
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