SPECIAL: The U.S. House passed a bill to prohibit maps depicting Taiwan as part of China. The full text in English is in the below:
In Chinese:
US House passes bill banning purchase of maps depicting Taiwan as part of China
‘Communist China is communist China, Mr. Speaker. And Taiwan is Taiwan’: Tiffany
By Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2021/07/29 11:52
Botched map of China and Taiwan in 2019 State Department video on China’s debt diplomacy. (U.S. Department of State IIP screenshot)
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday (July 29) passed an appropriations bill that includes an amendment that would prohibit the U.S. State Department from purchasing any map depicting Taiwan as part of China.
On Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives passed the fiscal year 2022 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations bill, worth approximately US$62.2 billion, with a vote of 217 in favor to 212 opposed. Included in the bill is an amendment proposed by Tom Tiffany (R-WI), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Scott Perry (R-PA), Kat Cammack (R-FL), and Mike Gallagher (R-WI) that bars the State Department from spending funds on maps that portray Taiwan as Chinese territory.
Specifically, item 35 “Prohibits the expenditure of funds to create, procure or display any map that depicts Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China.” In his floor statement, Tiffany described the amendment as a “common-sense measure” given that “we all know that Taiwan has never been part of communist China.”
Tiffany pointed out that the people of Taiwan “elect their own leaders, raise their own armed forces, conduct their own foreign policy, and maintain their own international trade agreements.” He stressed that Taiwan is a sovereign, democratic, and independent country “by every measure” and that claims to the contrary are “simply false.”
The congressman chastised the “one China” policy followed by the U.S. since the 1970s as “Beijing’s bogus argument that Taiwan is part of communist China.” Tiffany described the policy as “dishonest” and called for it to be abandoned.
He acknowledged that although it is not possible to end the “one China” policy with the appropriations bill, Congress can “at least require honest maps that stop perpetuating the “‘one China’ lie.”
Concluding his remarks, he declared: “Communist China is communist China, Mr. Speaker. And Taiwan is Taiwan.”