Jeremy Lin, a 24-year old Harvard graduate and point guard for the Houston Rockets, has shot to stardom in China and Taiwan. In fact, he has around 3 million followers on Weibo, a Chinese social networking site, which is three times the amount of his followers on Twitter.
An appeal to form a political party inspired by Lin has been rejected. One objection dealt with the name of the party. It was said that the name had no relevance to the purpose of the party, which was to obtain free health care for everyone in Taiwan, an island populated by around 23 million, though it already has the second highest life expectancy in East Asia. In addition, they stated that putting the name of an uninvolved person violated the Civil Code. The applicant argued that another party in Taiwan was also named after an influential person. The Chung San Party was formed in 1999, and got it's name from Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a revolutionary generally regarded as the founder of the Chinese republic. Later, the applicant had even changed his name to Lin Shu-hao, Lin's Chinese name to make the application more relevant, but was rejected again in May 10.