The two sides of the Taiwan Strait have continued to get closer over the past year, with the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) and the opening of Taiwan to independent Chinese tourists. However, the results of an opinion poll recently conducted by a local media outlet has found that the views and feelings of Taiwanese about the Chinese government have not similarly improved.
Although the ratio of respondents holding favorable views toward Chinese has increased, more people have become critical of the Chinese government, the survey results released by the -Chinese--language United Daily News showed.
The survey also showed a decline in the number of people willing to work or launch new ventures in China, or allow their children to study there.
The newspaper used a specially designed scale to gauge the state of cross-strait ties as either “friendly/mutually beneficial,” “stable” or “tense/competitive” based on five categories of indicators — politics, military, diplomacy, trade/economics and social exchanges.
The latest survey, conducted on Aug. 30, found that most respondents felt cross-strait relations have not undergone any significant changes over the past year, except that civilian exchanges have increased moderately.
According to the poll, respondents generally felt that cross-strait political, economic and social relations have remained stable over the past year, but many said cross-strait military ties remain strained, while relations on the diplomatic front were tense and competitive.
Although most people surveyed felt that there had been little improvement in cross-strait military ties over the past year, a few respondents thought a military conflict would break out between the two sides in the near term.
In the latest survey, only 29 percent said they held a favorable view of the Chinese government, down 4 percentage points from last year’s survey.
In contrast, 59 percent said they had negative views about the Chinese government.
The survey showed that 44 percent of respondents have been to China, up 2 percentage points from the poll last year. Among those who have never visited China, 29 percent said they plan to go there for sightseeing in the future.
In last year’s poll, 34 percent said they were willing to take jobs in China, but that number fell to 29 percent this year, while the percentage of those who said they would not go there for work increased to 66 percent from 62 percent.
Similarly, less than 30 percent said they were willing to launch new ventures in China or let their children study in China, down 4 to 5 percentage points from last year’s levels. In this year’s poll, 73 percent said they would not launch new ventures in China and 66 percent said they were opposed to letting their children study there.
Comparing the newspaper’s survey findings over the past two years, Lin Chong-pin (林中斌), a former deputy minister of national defense and former deputy head of the Mainland Affairs Council, said increased civilian exchanges have led to a rise in the percentage of people with a positive impression of Chinese and a decline in the ratio of people with negative views.
In comparison, more people held unfavorable views toward the Chinese government this year than a year ago, with the number of those who described the Chinese government as authoritarian and despotic shooting up significantly, Lin said.
He also found that Taiwanese, unlike citizens of most East Asian countries who tend to worry about China’s rise as an economic power, do not seem to be worried about China’s rising national strength.
However, he said, Taiwanese have become more jittery about China’s suppression of Taiwan in economic, military and diplomatic fields, as well as China’s unwillingness to give up its desire to acquire Taiwan.
On the increase in the number of people unwilling to work or launch ventures in China, Lin said the trend indicates that Taiwanese have become more appreciative of their liberal and democratic way of life.
Democratic Progressive Party spokesman Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) echoed Lin’s views, saying that expanded and deepened civilian exchanges have allowed Taiwanese to see more clearly the merits of the nation’s democratic political system and pluralistic society.
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