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Trump Stopped, But Taiwan Still Refers to Covid-19 as a Chinese Virus

Ralph Jennings

   TAIPEI, TAIWAN - Most of the world calls this year's deadly respiratory
   disease outbreak Covid-19 and attributes it to a novel coronavirus.
   When U.S. President Donald Trump described the virus last month as
   "Chinese" because of its origin, Chinafumedand Trump dropped it.

   All along, Taiwanese officials, media and the public have been using
   the term "Wuhan pneumonia" in Mandarin Chinese, a reference to the
   central Chinese city where the disease was first reported in December.
   Local media sometimes call it "China Wuhan pneumonia."

   The label will eventually create a new fissure in already strained
   relations between Taiwan and China, analysts say.

   "Relations between the two sides have become even worse since
   Covid-19," said ChaoChien-min, dean of social sciences at Chinese
   Culture University in Taipei. "If you keep using a location-based name,
   it's unfriendly toward others."

   Taiwanese came up with the term "Wuhan pneumonia" because they were
   talking about it in December and needed a descriptor before the World
   Health Organization gave it an official name in mid-February.

   But Taiwan and China are at odds politically. Use of the earlier term
   instead of the formal WHO one pivots Taiwanese people's attention back
   to where Covid-19 was discovered and stands to sour their impression of
   China.

   Trump dropped the "Chinese virus" in late March and said it was
   important to avoid blaming Asian Americans for the outbreak.

   In Taiwan, the government's Central Epidemic Command Center uses the
   term "Wuhan pneumonia" on its daily news releases in parentheses after
   the English word Covid-19 and the foreign ministry uses the term "Wuhan
   pneumonia" only in some of its statements.

   Taiwan's government-funded Central News Agency calls the disease "Wuhan
   pneumonia" in its many news flashes every day about the disease
   outbreak in other parts of the world. On the streets, people speak of
   the disease almost always as "Wuhan pneumonia."

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