Although a recent survey that showed that most Taiwanese teenagers would be reluctant to fight for their country, a Ministry of National Defense (MND) spokesperson yesterday played down the results.
Addressing the survey carried out by the Chinese-language CommonWealth magazine, the results of which were published on Monday, MND spokesman David Lo (羅紹和) said it used hypothetical questions and that the sampling methods and design could affect the results.
Lo said the ministry had educated people who were loyal and proud of their country and believed most people would rise up to defend the country in its hour of need.
More than 60 percent of the junior and senior high school students polled identified with the core concepts of “civic duties,” including respecting national symbols and paying taxes, the poll showed.
More than seven out of 10 respondents (71.8 percent) said people should stand up when they hear the national anthem or see the national flag being raised, while 68.5 percent said they did not agree with “dodging military service.”
According to 61.5 percent of the teens, paying taxes is a civic duty regardless of a person’s satisfaction with the government and its policies, while 65.8 percent said people should stand up when a national leader appears at a public venue whether they like them or not.
However, fewer than two out of five respondents (38.7 percent) said they would be willing to fight or see family members fight if a war were to break out between their country and another, while 44.3 percent said they were unwilling.
The results indicate that the conventional values of “sacrificing oneself for the country” and “absolute obedience” were no longer “unshakable” among young people, the magazine said.
Meanwhile, 66.9 percent of the students polled believed same-sex marriage should be made legal.
The survey polled 3,715 high school students nationwide aged between 12 and 17 to identify the differences between their civic values and those of older generations.
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
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
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