More Hong Kong residents have become supportive of Taiwan’s efforts to rejoin the UN and fewer are now identifying as Chinese since Beijing authorities blocked imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, a new poll found.
A Hong Kong University poll conducted earlier this month found that 42 percent of the territory’s residents backed Taiwan’s bid to become a UN member, a 5 percent increase from similar polls in September.
The increase in support for Taiwan’s efforts could have resulted from China’s refusal to free Liu from prison to attend the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Norway, said Robert Chung (鍾庭耀), director of the university’s Public Opinion Program.
The poll also found that 63 percent of respondents now consider themselves “Hong Kongers” rather than “Chinese,” compared to 57 percent six months ago.
Thirty-five percent of respondents see themselves as either “Chinese in Hong Kong” or “Chinese,” a drop of 8 percentage points from a similar survey in June.
Chung said China’s treatment of Liu was most likely also responsible for the slide.
The good performance of Hong Kong’s team at the Guangzhou Asian Games last month and a hostage situation in the Philippines in August involving 15 tourists from Hong Kong could have contributed to the stronger sense of Hong Kong identity among residents, he said.
The telephone survey collected 1,000 valid samples.
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power
RSS