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.
TOO TIRED: Investigators found that the pilot’s lack of alertness could be attributed to a lack of sleep the previous night, when he had slept with his child It was a copilot’s inappropriate operation of the aircraft and the pilot’s insufficient alertness that led to a hard landing of a China Airlines cargo flight on Dec. 13, 2018, the Taiwan Transportation Safety Board said yesterday. Flight CI6844, a Boeing 747-409 which departed from Hong Kong International Airport, landed on the pre-threshold area of runway L5 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, about 21m before the head of the runway, an investigation report said. The hard landing damaged three runway lights, but none of the personnel on board sustained any injuries, the report said. When approaching the runway, the copilot failed to maintain
DISTRUST WARRANTED? The WHO is under China’s control and has become a useless organization, while data from China cannot be trusted, a Control Yuan member said China’s demand that the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, Hubei Province, not be referred to with names like the “Wuhan pneumonia” betrays its lack of confidence in itself, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told lawmakers yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) asked Su, during a interpellation at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, for his view on China’s attempts to redeem its national image in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included China’s efforts to “bleach” its image, including having WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus publicly praise its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, and thanking it for buying time
REPEAT OFFENDER: The man went outside for exercise on Wednesday and then left his home on Saturday with his girlfriend, officials said A New Taipei City man has been fined NT$400,000 (US$13,221) and ordered into government quarantine after breaking home quarantine for a second time on Saturday. The 25-year-old man, surnamed Chen (陳) returned to Taiwan on Sunday last week and was ordered to home quarantine until Sunday. He was seen leaving his home on a scooter with his girlfriend on Saturday, three days after he was fined NT$200,000 for going outside to exercise, police said. Chen has now been placed in a quarantine center arranged by the district office and health center of the district where he lives, police said. Police warned the public
Taipei residents who stay at hotels in the city during their 14-day mandatory quarantine period are eligible to apply for the city’s NT$7,000 subsidy, with online applications to be launched next week. Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) on Monday said Taipei residents who have COVID-19 Health Declaration and Home Quarantine Notice dated after March 19 and a quarantine hotel receipt for the dates covered by the quarantine period, would be eligible for the subsidy. The Taipei City Government on Sunday told the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) that so many city residents are under home quarantine that about 90 percent of
RSS