Taiwan passports recalled over picture mix-up

Taipei : Taiwan has had to scrap 200,000 new passports after an embarrassing design blunder mistakenly swapped an image of an airport in Washington for the island’s main airport.

The head of consular affairs resigned and another official was demoted Wednesday over the fiasco as online pundits joked Taiwan had become the “51st state” of the United States.

The mockery reflects Taiwan’s delicate political situation as a self-ruling island claimed by China as part of its territory. The US is its main ally and arms supplier, which has angered Beijing.

Online commenters joked that there should now be a vote on whether Taiwan should become part of the US.

“So desperately want to be American... alright, let’s have a referendum,” one user wrote on local media’s Apple Daily’s website.