✉️ This story was featured in this week’s Coffee News Club
👋 Get the Coffee News Club newsletter in your inbox weekly—sign up.
On April 12, Bala won the 2026 World Latte Art Championship representing Taiwan. However, last week, the World Coffee Championships (WCC) replaced all mentions of Taiwan with Chinese Taipei on its website, the Taipei Times reported.
There has been a complex and controversial dispute over Taiwan’s political status since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Taiwan has its own president and government, yet the People’s Republic of China (PRC) considers Taiwan to be part of China.
Internationally, various countries, including the United States, maintain a deliberately ambiguous stance to continue diplomatic relations with the PRC while still engaging with Taiwan. The name “Chinese Taipei” is used for Taiwanese athletes competing in international sporting competitions to avoid offending the Chinese government.
The WCC is the organizing committee for many major coffee competitions. As Zac Cadwalader reports for Sprudge, it has used Taiwan as the country designation for competitors since 2007. But on April 28, all mentions of Taiwan on the WCC website were replaced by Chinese Taipei.
A photo of Bala on stage, with a screen showing he was representing Taiwan, was taken down. The Wayback Machine shows that the website previously listing past WCC winners was removed (it’s still accessible here) and now shows a statement from the organizing body about its decision to switch from using the name “Taiwan” to “Chinese Taipei.”
Coffee professionals have been critical of the switch. In a newsletter article, writer Jenn Chen called it “a bullshit, spineless move, doing it silently and hoping that no one notices. The erasure of Taiwan means less visibility of the country on the proverbial coffee world stage, brushing aside all the inroads and contributions it has made, and sets a dangerous precedent on SCA’s end.”
Berg Wu, who won the 2016 World Barista Championship, wrote on Facebook that “I once had the opportunity to stand on the World Barista Championship stage representing Taiwan … To me, Taiwan is not just a name. It is an identity and a shared memory built by many competitors, coaches, judges, cafes, roasters, and all the consumers who have supported us along the way.”
On May 1, the WCC released a statement on its website, stating that the change was an administrative decision to align with the naming conventions of international sporting bodies such as FIFA and the International Olympic Committee. “This is an update to how competitors are recorded, administratively. It does not change who can compete, how they qualify, or the experience they have on the WCC stage”, the statement reads in part.
Read more on the WCC’s renaming controversy from Sprudge here.
