Taiwan's Right to Host Asia Open 2019 Revoked; Hong Kong to Host Event in China Instead

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Willin

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According to a Taiwanese news source, Taiwan is no longer the host of the 2019 Asia Open. The federation states that the international situation in Taiwan is "unsuitable" for hosting such an event. Based on the article's wording it seems like Taiwan's right to host any future international competition is revoked at the moment. Hong Kong has been awarded the competition instead and will host the event in China.



Personally, this seems a very strange reason and something of an excuse given Hong Kong's recent political turmoil and protests compared to the lack of major international news coming out of Taiwan. It's also strange given that Taiwan has hosted many successful international competitions in comparison to Hong Kong - in fact, Hong Kong always holds their competitions in China. One wonders if the Chinese skating federation is pulling something sketchy on the road to Beijing 2022 like they did last year or if someone in Taiwan managed to piss the ISU off. It's really a bizarre situation right now. I'll be curious to see how (or if) it unfolds and what the ISU has to say about the situation.
 
Another article seems to suggest that there could have been pressure from China on the ISU to not recognize Taiwan due to the One China Policy, citing another example of Taiwan's hosting status being taken away for another sporting event recently. This appears to be a sudden decision and Taiwan wasn't given a chance to make a submission.

news.sina.com.cn

“事件很突然” 台北被取消花滑国际赛主办权

“事件很突然” 台北被取消花滑国际赛主办权
news.sina.com.cn news.sina.com.cn

At this rate I wonder if Emmy Ma could compete at BJ 2022.
 
Wait, is the ISU really saying the Chinese Taipei AKA Taiwan told them it would be better if the event were held elsewhere?
 
barbk said:
Sounds slimey.
Click to expand...
I don't think "ISU did it". I think the Chinese Federation contacted other Asia Region Federations, said whatever they had to say/do/offer/etc to convince them to agree to move the venue. ISU was just informed of the Feds' decision and that's that - like i said in another post, old communist/socialist countries' tricks - use the premise "by the will of the people"...
 
Coco said:
Wait, is the ISU really saying the Chinese Taipei AKA Taiwan told them it would be better if the event were held elsewhere?
Click to expand...

Tinami Amori said:
I don't think "ISU did it". I think the Chinese Federation contacted other Asia Region Federations, said whatever they had to say/do/offer/etc to convince them to agree to move the venue. ISU was just informed of the Feds' decision and that's that - like i said in another post, old communist/socialist countries' tricks - use the premise "by the will of the people"...
Click to expand...

I highly doubt that the meeting in late May even existed.

This is the agenda of the June 15 meeting at Chinese Taipei Skating Union General Assembly. There are also reports on the progress and budget of the "2019 Asian International Figure Skating Classic - Taipei Station".

I believe ISU is lying. There are too many discrepancies. If Chinese Fed and ISU wanted to harass Taiwanese Fed, they should've come up with a much more sophisticated way.
 
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Is this a sign of things to come regarding Taiwan and it's ability to not only host events but being recognized as its own sovereign state with the repercussions that come with that beyond hosting international events? Right now we recognize PRC which considers Taiwan a "rogue province" officially but in actuality it's been able to be treated like a sovereign state in terms of at least hosting events.
 
mikeko said:
I highly doubt that the meeting in late May even existed.

This is the agenda of the June 15 meeting at Chinese Taipei Skating Union General Assembly. There are also reports on the progress and budget of the "2019 Asian International Figure Skating Classic - Taipei Station".
Click to expand...

I just want to add up to some information posted publicly by CTSU in the past couple of months.
-On April 16th, the '2019 TPE National Team Selection Championships' was held. One of the purpose of the competition is to select CT members to take part in 'Asian Open FS competition. (Result page)
-On May 29th, the TPE Team to take part in AO competition is announced. (announcement in Chinese). Team members here. And it is by this formal document, that we know it is confirmed that the AO Fs competition will be held in China, Dongguan, on the date of Aug. 6-9, 2019. There was even documents of the formal announcement of AOFST to be found ont the CTSU website.
-On Jun 15th, a member's meeting of CTSU was held (photo). And I believe the link from the twitter was from this meeting, and until this moment, the 'Asian Open International Figure Skating Classics, Taipei' still holds, at least for the local skating union members, and also by CTSU.

So, the contradiction is that, it doesn't make sense if all these have been done publicly, and CTSU is also sending the 'indication' to ISU to say that they prefer NOT to undertake this event?

And to follow up, also published in the official website of CTSU, on Jun 21, they received an official letter from HKSU that AOFST has been rescheduled, due to the social issues in HK (link).

So exactly what has been going on here during the process?
 
To add to the above, I'm guessing one of the key points to this confusion was with the naming of AOFST, and the 'Asian Open International FS Classics'. Obviously, the CTSU has been taking these two as two separate events. However, in the 'delayed' ISU statement, ISU has been treating these two as the same event, most likely from the very beginning. It just doesn't make sense to me with this statement from ISU that 'However at the end of May, the ISU received indications from several ISU Asian Member Federations including the Chinese Taipei Skating Union that it would be preferable to host this event in another Asian country.' But it could make more sense, that CTSU was proposing to have 'AOFST' to be held in some other places instead of HK, due to the social situation in HK at that time in May.

And this is one point I could not figure from the first place: I actually wonder why CTSU had to use the name 'Asian Open International Figure Skating Classics, Taipei'? It could be easily confused with the original AOFST. And perhaps if CTSU had technically chosen an alternative name (Something simple like Taipei Open), the problem could have been solved (well, not sure if CTSU might be forced to take on the name due to some other reasons....then that's another story behind that we won't get to know unless some clarification will be made).
 
If Asian Open International FS Classics is sanctioned by Asian Skating Union, including "Asian Open" in the name could be a necessity.
 
Head of CTSU removed for poor handling of the whole debacle.
m.focustaiwan.tw

Sports authorities order removal of skating association official - Focus Taiwan

Taipei, Aug. 2 (CNA) The Sports Administration on Friday ordered the secretary-general of the Chinese Taipei Skating Union (CTSU) to be removed from his position to punish the group for giving up the right to host a figure skating event later this year in Taipei.
m.focustaiwan.tw m.focustaiwan.tw
 
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