On the eve of Taiwan's January 2016 presidential election, Chou Tzuyu, a 16-year-old Taiwanese pop singer, was accused by angry Chinese netizens of promoting Taiwan Independence – taiwan duli or taidu for short – for waving Taiwan's national flag on South Korean TV. Taiwanese voters hovered between outrage and perplexity when Chou was forced by her Chinese promoter to record a humiliating apology, not least because the flag of Taiwan is that of the Republic of China (ROC). The next day, the ‘pan-Green’ Taiwanese nationalist Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) candidate, Tsai Ing-wen, defeated Eric Chu, the candidate for the incumbent ‘pan-Blue’ Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), and pledged to uphold the ROC constitution before a portrait of Sun Yat-sen, the father of the ROC. Deep-Green taidu groups took a different stance. Accusing Chou of mindlessly conniving in ROC Independence – zhonghua duli or huadu for short – they also dismissed the DPP and other pan-Green parties as maintaining ‘the ROC colonial government-in-exile’ (Tsay 2016). Thus in 2016 huadu became both a rebuke and a definition of Taiwan's provisional status, while taidu remains an aspiration until the ROC is replaced by a Republic of Taiwan (ROT) (Yeh 2016). Deep-Greens perceive ROC institutions and symbols as a threat. Yet the fact is that the ROC flag now represents Taiwan. Nowadays, young Taiwanese paint it on their cheeks as a mark of Taiwanese-ness, not Chinese-ness. For hard-core taidu supporters, this is unthinking acquiescence to Chinese symbols. Yet, it shows that, for most Taiwanese, taidu and huadu are indistinguishable and that as much as the ROC made Taiwan, so Taiwan made the ROC.