Organizers around the globe continue to sweat over the fraught question of whether to let the Republic of China participate in events; and, when the Taiwanese are allowed, whether their country may in clear conscience be called at least “Taiwan” in public materials. After all, the participants from the People’s Republic of China might get upset and might even walk off in a huff.
In the case of the Gwangju Biennale Pavilion, the outcome of the drama is a happy one—if the organizers do not reverse the decision, itself a reversal, that they have just made in favor of Taipei (Korea JoongAng Daily, August 30, 2026).
The Gwangju Biennale has been dragged into a naming dispute between China and Taiwan a week before it opens. China halted work on its own pavilion after organizers agreed to let the Taiwanese exhibition use the name “Taiwan Pavilion.”
Chinese creators and installation staff walked off the site at the Ha Jung-woong Museum of Art in Gwangju on Friday and left the Chinese pavilion unfinished, the Gwangju Biennale Foundation said Sunday. The walkout is seen as a response to Chinese objections over the use of “Taiwan.”
The biennale has run a pavilion project along with its main exhibition since 2018, bringing in art and cultural institutions from Korea and abroad. This year, 16 national pavilions and 11 institutions are taking part, among them the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA).
The Taiwanese side had negotiated throughout on the understanding that its space would be called the Taiwan Pavilion. It protested when the organizers switched to the museum’s acronym, NTMoFA, in June. Artists in Taiwan and in Korea backed the objection, and the foundation approved the change back to the Taiwan Pavilion on Wednesday.
The report doesn’t quite exactly characterize what happened. The Gwangju Biennale was not “dragged into a naming dispute.” It dragged itself into a dispute by failing from the outset to firmly tell the PRC reps that no way was Gwangju going to ban display of the word “Taiwan.” Although the PRC guys might then still have bellowed and stalked off, the biennale’s organizers would have avoided any involvement in a dispute.
When organizers ban displays of the word “Taiwan” at their events and require such alternatives as “NTMoFA” or “group from Taipei” or whatever to be used instead, the prohibition amounts to double appeasement of the tender and aggressive sensibilities of the People’s Republic of China. The PRC has largely won the war to prevent the Republic of China from being referred to as “Republic of China” in the signage of major international events.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: “What Is This ‘Republic of China?’ ”
