Taiwan's "strategic ambiguity" extends to the United States decennial Census where residents of Taiwanese heritage must check a box titled "Other Asian" and then write-in Taiwanese. Even then, except for some specialized data runs, Taiwanese-Americans will still be counted as Chinese in the general population count.
The exclusion of Taiwan from the list of countries and islands in decennial census has resulted in
serious undercounts of Taiwanese-Americans in prior Census counts. Some have estimated that
as many as 80% of the Taiwanese-American population has been miscounted as Chinese.
A consortium of Taiwanese-American groups are trying to help obtain an accurate count and
have joined together to produce a public service announcement that promotes Taiwan. It
includes the Taiwanese American Citizen League, the Taiwanese American Foundation,
TaiwaneseAmerican.org, Taiwanese American Professionals, and the Taiwanese American
Federation of Northern California.. (Source: Examiner.com Mar 5, 2010).