President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is likely to begin political negotiations with China if the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) wins the special municipality elections next month, a poll made public yesterday indicated.
The poll, conducted by the Taiwan Thinktank, which is generally perceived as more sympathetic with the pan-green camp, found that 52 percent of the respondents considered it possible that Ma would begin political negotiations with Beijing if his party won the elections.
Among those who claimed to be politically neutral, about 43 percent said it was possible, against 38.1 percent who said it was not possible.
The poll showed that 63 percent said Ma mostly paid attention to the interests of big businesses during cross-strait negotiations, while 26.1 percent said he paid more attention to public interests. When asked whether they were worried Ma would undermine Taiwan’s sovereignty during the negotiation process, 54.0 percent said yes, while 43.8 percent said no.
About 56 percent of voters who considered themselves to be moderate said they were worried.
The poll, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, questioned 1,046 adults nationwide and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
Lai I-chung (賴怡忠), an executive board member at the think tank, said the poll showed the public saw clearly that Beijing would step up its political pressure after the two sides signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in June.
“If the KMT wins the November polls, there will be very little excuse to stall the political talks,” he said.
“However, the poll tells us that many people are very worried whether the Ma administration can protect Taiwan. The Ma administration must address the problem before it worries about whether President Ma can meet his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao (胡錦濤),” Lai added.
On the country’s future, nearly 59 percent said they preferred independence, against 22.3 percent who said they favored unification with China. Those who opted for the status quo were numbered at 11.3 percent.
Among those who claimed to be politically neutral, about 57 percent chose independence.
About 54 percent said the country would move toward unification with China under Ma’s leadership, while only 29.6 percent said that sovereignty would be strengthened.
Lai said it was worth noting that a majority of the public and moderate voters were concerned about Taiwan’s future.
Former National Security Council deputy secretary-general Chen Chung-hsin (陳忠信) said various polls on the same issue conducted over the years were consistent in their results and showed a steady increase in the preference for independence.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater