Public opinion is divided on a meeting between Taiwan’s and China’s presidents and how Taiwan should react if the US reduces its arms sales, a poll showed yesterday.
Taiwan Indicator Survey Research (TISR) said 37.9 percent of respondents said Taiwan should buy fewer weapons from the US if China pledges to abandon the use of force against Taiwan.
However, almost half (48.3 percent) said Taiwan should not reduce its arms procurement, while 13.7 percent declined to answer.
The poll was conducted shortly after media reports said Beijing’s had proposed establishing an institutionalized dialogue with Washington about US arms sales to Taiwan, which the US later denied.
Opinion on arms sales seemed to be split as well, with 44.5 percent of respondents saying they hoped Taiwan could purchase better weapons systems to boost its military confidence against China’s modernized military capability, while 39.6 percent said advanced weaponry would be not be necessary since cross-strait tensions have been dramatically reduced.
TISR said public opinion on arms procurement is more divided than in April 2009, when a similar poll was conducted.
However, the majority of the respondents (63 percent) remain supportive of the “status quo,” even if Washington reduces its arms sales, with 19 percent saying that Taiwan should expedite the independence movement process and 3.2 percent favoring accelerated unification.
On the possibility of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) meeting, which Ma mentioned last week, 43.2 percent of respondents support such a meeting before Ma leaves office in 2016, while 36 percent do not support it and 20.6 percent did not respond.
The support rating has dropped compared with a poll in May 2010, when 51.5 percent of respondents said they supported a meeting between Ma and then-Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
A question on what would be the best location for such a meeting, with respondents allowed to make more than on choice, Taiwan was named by 52.3 percent as the bestn, followed by a third country (42.2 percent), the median line of the Taiwan Strait (32.2 percent), Kinmen or Matsu (27.2 percent) and China (25.3 percent).
A multiple choice question on the titles to be used for such a meeting found 72 percent of the respondents favored “Republic of China president and the People’s Republic of China [PRC] president.”
The second most popular choice (57.4 percent) was “leader of the Taiwan region and leader of mainland China region,” followed by “Chinese Nationalist Party chairman and Chinese Communist Party general-secretary” (42.1 percent).
Other possible options were Ma and Xi meeting as leaders of APEC members — Chinese Taipei and the PRC (39.2 percent), while 33.7 percent said they should meet as leaders under the titles used in the WTO.
The survey was conducted on Monday and Tuesday and collected 1,002 valid samples. It had a margin of error of 3.1 percent.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
RSS