I don’t know about the technicalities. My main point is why is it all such a big issue? Only a pedantic nerd would spot the mistake. It reminds me of the UK’s current plan to change our passport colours back to the old blue/black from the EU pale burgundy. I can understand why people have pathetic face issues and am prepared to humour them, but not when it’s a clear waste of money and resources.
I think the point is exactly that a vast amount of money and resources have been wasted as this utterly incompetent agency has f*cked this up. The fact they can’t even get the nation’s largest godd*am airport right speaks loudly about the utter dysfunction of MOFA–for far too long, one of the absolute worst of our government ministries. Enough is enough!
Guy
Back when Canadian currency still had a $0.01 denomination, someone noticed that the maple leaf on it was from a Norwegian maple! 
Whereas the species most commonly associated with the national emblem is the sugar maple. 
Now that’s nerdic pedantry! 
The rationalization was Canada is an immigrant country, and Norwegians have made significant contributions to our heritage. 
I think it sounds a little different in an ROC-USA context.
I dimly recall some incident in which a German government website included, among various picturesque scenes of Germany, a couple of sites that were (ahem) not actually in Germany anymore.
A “worst of 2017” piece the other day said the same thing about Lithuania. 
While they are at it, they can just print the Union Jack on the cover. Unmistakably Britain. Oh wait, that’s until Scotland will go independent.
They are lucky they didn’t put an American Oak leaf there!
An energetic–if also frankly speculative–smackdown from Michael Turton on this matter:
http://michaelturton.blogspot.com/2018/01/when-chinese-chauvinism-top-down.html
Guy
1 Like
Meh, silly article. The DPP and Pan Greenies are equally capable of similar levels of incompetence.
Once again, there are very few greens in the government. To admit so is career suicide. Though yes, incompetence runs deep.
Thurton has a point in terms of selecting a neutral image. Since currently at the very top there is one green administrator, the blues do take care not to offend silly Billy. They willingly do so when there is real damage and blood, a true strike. But smaller minions try not to upset the boat unless they can sink it.
So the Taiwanese government decided to slap a sticker over the mistake rather than fix it and reissue.
I thought stickers and marking up passports was a no no.
It’s fine if it’s an official sticker issued by the government. Such as most visas and some official endorsements by the passport holder’s home government. It’s likely to cause some inconveniences at airline check-ins and border controls around the world for a while but that will pass with time as awareness rises.
Govt can add pages , ala The US of A. Most govts that allow in Taiwan passports in the first place are pretty lenient to Taiwanese already. They won’t mind a govt sticker.
Since passports are about …travel. Why not in future print up a passport where the images are of countries all around the world. Problem solved.
Put the Eiffel Tower there. Unmistakably about France. Etc.
1 Like
Why bother having pictures at all? Blank pages would be just fine and less costly.
1 Like
Red tape nightmare.
Possibly because embedded images make them harder to copy? I don’t know, just a thought.
Oh and put a pic of the Great Wall there too, just so the Chinese don’t feel butt hurt to be left out of Taiwan’s great Passport for the World new philosophy.
1 Like
In theory, this was supposed to be a safer passport, with state of the art technology, harder to copy, with 3D picturs of the holder and other stuff.
He has an irrelevant point that he shoehorned into a political diatribe. Nobody is debating whether the choice of pictures is political. Maybe it is, but thats irrelevant. The issue is they put the wrong picture.
Well, one would like to think that such a boo boo would be part of a clever plan, not just the resulting act of a faulty flawed and malaise ridden system.
OTOH, believe me, from the belly of the beast, you wouldn’t believe the kind of decisons that are “politically motivated”. Nonsense to the n power, but still with some political “reasoning” behind it.
You seriously think it’s a conspiracy? I will defer to your knowledge of Taiwanese bureaucratic machinations, but tend to think good old incompetence is likely to be at play, rather than collusion.
Nevertheless, Turtons article is still irrelevant.