No flags?

According to the Taipei Times

[Taiwan's] representative office in Athens cautioned Taiwanese watching the [Olympic] Games in the city against waving any flag apart from the Taiwanese delegation's official flag, which was approved by the International Olympic Committee.

Differing from the national flag of the Republic of China, the Taiwanese delegation's official flag consists of five rings and a plum blossom, the country's national flower. The delegation is formally registered as the "Chinese Taipei" team.

"If our citizens wave other flags to cheer our up team in the Games, security guards may stop their behavior or even drive them out," the representative office warned in a statement.

Many pro-independence people, no fans of the ROC flag, are sure to fall in love with it now. But such bullying by the mainland is hardly going to win friends amongst those in favor of the status quo and at the moment opposed to independence. (Maybe the commies are trying to goad the Taiwanese into independence?) Meanwhile, when Japan Sinks Arch-Rival China as Trouble Flares at the Asian Cup final,

Chinese fans vented their fury at the final whistle after Japan scored twice in a controversial second half, one group of several hundred hurling bottles and burning Japanese flags.

So because of Japanese wartime atrocities, in China it's OK to burn the flag of the Japanese when they win a soccer game, but it's not OK to burn the flag of the communist government, which is probably responsible for inflicting even more suffering on its own people than the Japanese. Meanwhile, in an athletic competition in a foreign country, waving the flag of the defeated civil war enemy of that same murderous and now corrupt communist government is also taboo, even though the Taiwanese people that enemy now governs have democratically elected it. Hello, international outrage? Oh, that's right. It's only a wrong if the US commits it.