Taiwan has an interesting relationship with its national flag. The Republic of China flag of course represents the whole of China, rather than just Taiwan – and so many regard it as an anachronism, and the more independence-minded would love to replace it. Of course, the fact that the main feature of the flag (the blue and white sun) is taken from the KMT’s party logo also means that feelings are split down party lines: KMT supporters are fierce supporters of the flag, while DPP supporters are less enamored with it.

This split of feelings means that the flag often gets used as a political football[*] . KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou is the latest person to try to bring the flag into play – showing his devotion to the flag and his country:

Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has postponed plans to fly a large Taiwanese flag atop Taipei 101 — the world’s tallest building — to help raise the nation’s profile.

The plans called for putting a flag at the top of the Taipei 101 building that would be large enough to be seen from the ground.

More flags to raise the nation’s profile? I don’t think so – Taipei is already covered in them: 2 weeks after ‘National flag waving day’ (October 10th) I was able to count 319 flags while on a 4 mile bus journey. I don’t think one more will make much difference.

Anyway, it seems Ma’s grand idea has run into some logistical problems:

“To make the flag visible to the people on the ground, we have to manufacture a huge flag which is the same height as an eight-story building,” said Lo Chih-cheng (羅智成), commissioner of the city’s Department of Information.

“We initially wanted to hang the flag at the top of the building. The problem is the difficulty of unfurling such a huge flag in gale-force winds. The wind speed at the height of 508m is about 150-166 kph,” Lo said.

An 8 story high flag blowing in an 150kph wind (and that’s before one of Taiwan’s many typhoons hits)? I’m guessing that Mayor Ma will drop this plan sooner rather than later.

* Before the legislative elections in 2004, Chen Shui Bian came up with the daft idea that if he couldn’t change the national flag, he’d force the KMT to change their flag. Voters were less than impressed with his cunning plan.