Less than 20 percent of international students studying in Taiwan consider President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) “daring and resolute” or a person with “high efficiency,” a survey showed yesterday.
The survey conducted on 365 international students by the World Leadership Education Foundation between June 15 and July 31 found that 31 percent considered Ma to be “gentle,” while only 14.8 percent of them said Ma was daring and resolute.
A total of 24.9 percent of foreign students said Ma was a “peace lover,” while only 17.3 percent of them said Ma demonstrated high administrative efficiency.
Only 19.7 percent of the students said the president was “honest and upright,” while 12.3 percent said Ma was a “reformer.”
Of the 365 students, 23.3 percent of the foreign interviewees said they had no idea who Ma was.
Thirty-nine percent of the international students said they were unfamiliar with Ma’s policies, while 37 percent said Ma’s ability to execute his policies lived up to their expectation of a national leader.
As many as 50.7 percent of the students said China and Taiwan were different countries, while 45.8 percent of them said the two sides of the Taiwan Strait were separate ethnic groups.
A total of 46.6 percent of the respondents said Taiwanese culture and its Chinese counterpart were “similar,” while only 9.7 percent said the two cultures were the same.
The survey also interviewed 842 Taiwanese students, with 62 percent of them saying Ma was “gentle,” while 41.9 percent said Ma was “honest and upright.”
However, as few as 5.7 percent of the Taiwanese students said Ma showed “high [administrative] efficiency,” while only 8.9 percent said Ma was “daring and resolute.”
Forty-eight percent of the Taiwanese students said Ma’s ability to execute his policies lived up to their expectation of a leader of the nation, with 20 percent disagreeing.
As many as 67 percent of the local students said they were worried that the nation’s economy was becoming over-reliant on China, while 74 percent said they were worried that Chinese tourists posed a threat to social order.
The survey also asked Taiwanese students to identify US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from a number of photos of international politicians, with 38 percent failing to do so.
RSS