A public opinion poll released by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) poll center yesterday found that a majority of respondents, or 56.8 percent, agreed that, generally speaking, the “China factor” has brought more negative effects to Taiwan than positive ones, a DPP spokesperson said.
The survey, conducted on Aug. 7 and Aug. 8, polled respondents on China’s impact in Taiwan in 10 areas that fell in the categories politics, economy and socio-cultural influence, Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
On politics, 70.3 percent of the respondents indicated they observed China had a “negative” influence on Taiwan’s international status, while 50.9 percent of those polled said Beijing influenced Taiwan’s policymaking.
Nearly half of the respondents argued that Beijing has asserted its influence on Taiwan’s economy, with 46.4 percent of the respondents saying that Taiwan’s industrial policy had been affected and 46.8 percent saying Chinese influence further widened the wealth gap in Taiwan.
The poll, which collected 1,115 valid samples and had a margin of error of 2.9 percent, was released to accompany an enlarged meeting of the party’s China Affairs Committee held yesterday, which focused on how the DPP should handle the influence of the “China factor” in Taiwan.
DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), who is visiting Thailand, and former DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) were unable to attend the meeting.
However, the meeting’s chairman, former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃), said participants still had enthusiastic discussions and agreed that bilateral exchanges between Taiwan and China are now inevitable, but should always be handled carefully.
“The exchanges should be conducted under three principles: safeguarding sovereignty, national security and transparency, and they should include a mechanism to monitor exchanges,” Yu said after the meeting.
Several distinguished participants gave their advice to the party based on their experience in dealing with Beijing, with Lau Ka Yee (劉家儀), a democracy advocate in Hong Kong, saying that Taiwan should be aware of Beijing’s infiltration into domestic politics and the media industry.
“Beijing does not like to see collaboration between Taiwan and Hong Kong concerning human rights and democratic movements,” she said.
Liu Te-hsun (劉德勳), who resigned as deputy minister of the Mainland Affairs Council in January, urged the DPP to have faith in Taiwanese, saying that the people would be able to tell China’s political motivations as bilateral exchanges increase.
However, he alerted the party on China’s eagerness to ink a cross-strait cultural agreement, part of Beijing’s grand plan of an invisible war to absorb Taiwan without a shot fired.
Academia Sinica researcher Chang Ku-ming (張谷銘) had similar suggestions to the DPP, saying that the party should reconsider its position on its policy on Chinese students in Taiwan, because the exchange would likely change the students’ view about Taiwan and, at the same time, sow the seeds of democracy for China’s democratic movement.
The meeting was the third of nine enlarged meetings on the DPP’s China policy.
The next meeting is scheduled for Aug. 29 and will be chaired by Tsai.
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
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
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