A majority of Taiwanese support their president's call for a March 20 referendum on whether China should stop pointing hundreds of missiles at the island, according to a TV poll broadcast yesterday.
The survey by TVBS, a cable news station, said 43 percent of respondents supported the historic referendum and 38 percent were against it. The remaining respondents had no opinion.
The telephone poll was conducted on Sunday, four days after US President George W. Bush warned Taiwan that he would oppose unilateral steps toward changing the status quo between Taiwan and China.
The TVBS poll reported that 44 percent of respondents believed Taiwan shouldn't have to consider Washington's stance when planning a referendum, while 42 percent said it does. The remainder had no opinion.
The poll of 1,271 people had a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.
If the referendum goes ahead, it will be held on March 20, when the presidential election is held.
The TVBS poll showed Lien Chan (
A poll by the China Times, a pro-unification daily, reported yesterday that the candidates were about even.
The survey, released yesterday, said support for Chen and Lien was 34.5 and 34.1 percent respectively. The remaining respondents were undecided.
The newspaper's telephone poll included 1,080 responses. It was conducted on Friday and Saturday and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Meanwhile, Chen has refused to back down despite intense pressure for him to scuttle the referendum.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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