China Power | Society | East Asia

Playing for a Place in the World Through Taiwan’s Baseball Diplomacy 

International sport offers something that conventional diplomacy often cannot: a stage on which Taiwan can appear before a global audience.

Taiwan has few embassies and no seat at the United Nations. On a good night at the ballpark, however, it can hold the world’s attention.

That was what happened on November 24, 2024, when Taiwan defeated Japan 4-0 in a sold-out Tokyo Dome and won the WBSC Premier12. It was Taiwan’s first title at a top-level international baseball tournament. Captain Chen Chieh-hsien supplied the decisive hit, a three-run home run, while four Taiwanese pitchers limited Japan to four hits. The loss ended Japan’s 27-game international winning streak.

Back in Taiwan, the result was treated as more than a sporting success. President Lai Ching-te and Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim described the players as national heroes, and crowds welcomed the team home with a parade through central Taipei. Taiwan soon climbed to second place in the WBSC men’s world ranking, behind Japan. It retained that position after the 2026 World Baseball Classic.

Yet the name engraved on the trophy was not Taiwan. It was Chinese Taipei. The name symbolizes the political conditions under which Taiwanese athletes enter international competition. 

Taiwan has formal diplomatic relations with only 12 partners and is excluded from bodies such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization. International sport therefore offers something that conventional diplomacy often cannot: a stage on which Taiwan can appear before a global audience as one team representing one society.

The opportunity comes with strict limits. Taiwanese athletes may compete, but generally under a name, flag, and anthem created specifically for international sport. Baseball thus gives Taiwan visibility but only up to a point. 

Baseball arrived in Taiwan as part of Japanese colonial rule. Japan, which governed the island between 1895 and 1945, promoted the sport among the local population as a means of education and assimilation. In “Colonial Project, National Game,” historian Andrew Morris traced the process by which Taiwanese players gradually took possession of a game introduced by the colonial authorities.

One of the defining episodes came in 1931. A team from the Chiayi Agriculture and Forestry School reached the final of Japan’s national high school championship at Koshien. Its players included Han Taiwanese, Indigenous Taiwanese and Japanese students, making the team unusual even within the colonial system that had produced it. They lost the final, but their run became part of Taiwan’s sporting memory. The story was retold in the 2014 film “Kano” and continues to serve as an origin story for Taiwanese baseball.

After World War II, and especially after the Republic of China (ROC) government was forced out of mainland China, baseball in Taiwan acquired a different political purpose. The Kuomintang government presented victories abroad as proof of the strength and vitality of the ROC. A 1968 win by a team of Indigenous Bunun children over a visiting Japanese youth side is still commonly credited with starting Taiwan’s baseball boom. The story is less straightforward than the popular version suggests: later research uncovered the use of ineligible players and legal problems involving team officials. Even so, the game became an important national legend, complications included.

The success that followed was real enough. From 1969 to 1996, Taiwanese teams won 17 Little League World Series championships, including five consecutive titles between 1977 and 1981. In August 2025, a Taipei elementary-school team defeated Las Vegas 7-0 to claim Taiwan’s 18th title and its first in 29 years. In the interim, Taiwan established the Chinese Professional Baseball League, which began play in 1990.

Over the course of a century, baseball’s significance for Taiwan has changed, even if the sport itself remains essentially the same. From a Japanese colonial project, baseball became a Kuomintang political showcase and, eventually, a popular symbol of Taiwan itself. But even if everyone knows they represent Taiwan, Taiwanese teams have to use alterative names in international competition.

Under the International Olympic Committee’s 1979 Nagoya Resolution and the subsequent 1981 Lausanne Agreement, Taiwanese athletes were allowed to compete as Chinese Taipei. They would use a designated Olympic flag and anthem rather than Taiwan’s official national symbols. The compromise kept Taiwanese athletes inside the Olympic system, while removing the name........

© The Diplomat