A survey released yesterday showed that 45.8 percent of young people born after 1984 agreed that Taiwan is an independent nation separate from China, while almost 60 percent of the respondents said that people have the right to refuse military conscription in the event of war against China.
The 21st Century Foundation, a local think tank, released the survey to explore the “sense of efficacy” of the generation toward cross-strait peace, attempting to find what they think are the ways to achieve peace and whether it is possible to reconcile cross-strait peace with preservation national sovereignty.
“A conclusion we drew from the survey was that people in Taiwan know well that Taiwan’s pursuit of de jure independence will lead to Chinese use of force against Taiwan,” said Chang Yu-tzung (張佑宗), an associate professor of politics at the National Taiwan University and leader of the research team.
The survey reflected the “pragmatic attitudes” of young people in Taiwan toward cross-strait issues, he added.
“They do not want to sacrifice their lives for sovereignty,” Chang said of the findings.
Chang called the research a “pioneering study” because it combined qualitative and quantitative methods of conducting focus group interviews with senior high school and college students. A total of 719 copies of questionnaires were completed either online or through face-to-face interviews, and the respondents had connections to the research team rather than being randomly selected.
On a question regarding the identity of the nation, 45.8 percent of the respondents agreed that “Taiwan and China are two different states,” 19.9 percent favored the characterization advocated by the Democratic Progressive Party that “the Republic of China (ROC) is Taiwan,” 24.4 percent chose the option that “the ROC is on Taiwan” as the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) insists, 7.9 percent said Taiwan and China both belong to the ROC, and 2 percent said that “Taiwan is part of China.”
The survey found that 57 percent of the respondents agreed that people have the right to refuse to be conscripted into the military if a war breaks out because of Taiwan’s declaration of independence, while 43 percent disagreed.
Asked whether they think people in Taiwan have to fight against China until the end, even if the government has stopped resisting when China forces Taiwan into unification, 48.3 percent of the respondents disagreed, and 51.7 percent agreed.
An analysis of these two questions showed that 31.6 percent of the respondents do not want to be mobilized for military duty and would rather surrender in case of military conflict between Taiwan and China, Chang said.
The survey showed that more than 80 percent of the respondents did not think that China would renounce the use of force against Taiwan even if a majority of people in Taiwan made it clear that they support Taiwanese independence or that they oppose unification with China.
On another question, 58.5 percent of the respondents said they thought China would not resort to military action against Taiwan if a majority of people in Taiwan said that they support unification, while 41.5 percent disagreed.
The survey found that 74.2 percent of the respondents agreed that Taiwan has to continue to procure weapons even though the move will cause tensions in cross-strait relations, and 25.8 percent disagreed.
Asked whether they support the government increasing tax rates to drive military procurements to enhance the country’s defenses, 44.2 percent of the respondents agreed, while 55.8 percent disagreed.
The result showed that for young people, “life is more valuable than defending the country” and that they would rather have their money spent in pursuit of their personal values than on defense, Chang said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS