An opinion poll released yesterday found that support for independence has fallen to its lowest level in three years, despite a majority of Taiwanese remaining opposed to unification with China.
Forty-four percent of respondents supported Taiwan’s eventual independence, the lowest figure since December 2009 and a drop of more than 10 percentage points from the 55.4 percent recorded in a poll conducted in August last year, according to Taiwan Indicators Survey Research (TISR).
Meanwhile, opposition to independence appeared to be gaining support, with 37.4 percent of those polled saying they did not support independence — the highest number since February 2006, when the polling institute began conducting surveys on the public’s views on cross-strait relations.
“The reasons behind the sudden change are unclear, but we believe it could be related to several visits to China by Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] politicians to promote closer bilateral ties,” TISR general manager Tai Li-an (戴立安) said in a press release.
Support rates for eventual independence have ranged between 42.1 percent and 51.4 percent in the 11 polls TISR has conducted between February 2006 and September 2011, before the record-high of 55.4 percent in August last year and the sudden slide in the latest poll, TISR data showed.
Support for eventual unification with China has not increased, with 63.6 percent opposing such a move.
However, the support rate for unification, 20.9 percent, was also at its highest since November 2008.
The survey also asked respondents for their general impression of the People’s Republic of China and found that a majority of them agreed with six of eight descriptions.
More than 60 percent of respondents viewed China as “powerful” and “successful,” but, at the same time, “unpredictable, untrustworthy, threatening and ‘different from us,’” the survey found.
Respondents were split on whether China adopts a defensive/offensive-oriented strategy and whether China is a willing partner.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) approval rating was 18.2 percent, down 0.2 percent from earlier last month, while his disapproval rating remained at 71.3 percent, according to the survey.
The poll, which was conducted between Monday and Tuesday, collected 1,008 valid samples with a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
RSS