A poll conducted by the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission in May showed that less than 40 percent of people were satisfied with the cross-strait policy of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, sparking accusations yesterday that Ma’s policy was serving the interests of China rather than Taiwan. The survey results were released earlier this month.
The survey asked respondents to rank their level of satisfaction with the government’s policy on a scale of zero to 10, where a score of less than four meant “dissatisfied,” five “neutral” and above six “satisfied.”
In terms of cross-strait policy, 29 percent of respondents said they were dissatisfied, 24.6 were neutral, 38.9 percent were satisfied, while 7.5 percent give no opinion, the survey showed.
The commission asked respondents to indicate on a scale from zero to 10 the level of importance they attached to cross-strait policy, with zero being not important and 10 being important.
It found that 59.1 percent of respondents gave the issue a score of at least six points, 18.8 percent gave it a score of five and 12.5 percent gave it less than 4 points, while 9.6 percent did not express any view.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) yesterday said the results of the survey showed that the government had failed to live up to the public’s expectations on cross-strait relations.
“That less than 40 percent of people surveyed were satisfied with Ma’s cross-strait policy in a government-conducted poll shows that his policy is satisfying China, not the people of Taiwan,” Chen said.
Responding to Chen’s analysis, Research, Development and Evaluation Commission Deputy Minister Sung Yu-hsieh (宋餘俠) said the DPP’s reading of the survey was wrong.
More than 63.5 percent of respondents gave a score of five or higher when asked about their satisfaction level with cross-strait policy, showing that they were satisfied, Sung said.
The commission carried out the survey on May 24 and May 25 and collected 1,202 valid samples. The poll had a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of less than 2.93 percentage points.
The result was released on the commission’s Web site on Oct. 12.
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