Slightly more than 50 percent of Taiwanese are worried that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is thinking about moving Taiwan toward formal independence if China does not reciprocate his goodwill, a Taiwanese newspaper survey said yesterday.
The China Times poll was taken days after Chen threatened in a series of speeches that Taiwan might "walk down its own Taiwanese road" if China does not respond to his efforts to improve relations.
A civil war split the two sides 53 years ago, and China is pressuring self-ruled, democratic Taiwan to unify. Beijing has warned that moves toward formal independence might trigger a war.
The newspaper poll reported that 53 percent of those surveyed were worried that Chen's remarks signaled that he was leaning toward independence if China didn't work with him to improve relations. The survey said 18 percent of the respondents thought Chen's comments were too vague and couldn't be interpreted as a threat to seek independence. Twenty-nine percent had no opinion.
Numerous polls have consistently reported that most Taiwanese oppose unification with China as long as it's ruled by a communist government.
But the surveys have also said that most Taiwanese oppose an immediate declaration of formal independence because they fear it would spark a devastating war.
Since he was elected two years ago, Chen has made several requests to meet with Chinese leaders. Beijing has insisted that before such meetings happen, Chen must agree that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.
The Taiwanese leader has refused to accept any preconditions for talks.
The China Times, a mass-market daily, said that its telephone poll was conducted on Wednesday evening and involved 762 responses from adults. The margin of error was 3.6 percentage points.
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