Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The nationality of several Taiwanese authors has been listed as Chinese in the Chinese Name Authority Joint Database Search System, a collaborative project between libraries from both sides of the Taiwan Strait to standardize the names of people, groups, meetings and other bodies.

Different Chinese-language authors often share a name and the use of pen names is common, so the National Library of China, the Administrative Center of China’s Academic Library & Information System and other agencies in 2003 established the Cooperative Committee for Chinese Name Authority to settle the confusion and create a standard format for cataloging.

Coverage of the announcement that eight Republican members of the US Congress and four of their Democratic colleagues on Wednesday nominated three of the leaders of Hong Kong’s Umbrella movement, and the movement as a whole, for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been both illuminating and disappointing.

It was no surprise that many newspapers and wire agencies chose to focus on China’s reaction to the announcement or to imply that there was some kind of implicit bias on the part of the nominators.