The majority of Taiwanese favor increased cross-strait exchanges, but appear to be very cautious about a peace agreement between Taiwan and China, the results of a public opinion poll released yesterday showed.
Asked if they support the signing of a bilateral peace agreement, with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) pledging “10 guarantees” in 2011, almost 70 percent of the respondents in a poll conducted by Taiwan Indicators Survey Research (TISR) said negotiations for such an accord should not begin before receiving authorization from a national referendum.
The poll found that 26.8 percent of respondents said negotiations should only begin after a referendum, 17.1 percent said the government should negotiate first and put the result to a referendum, and 41.5 percent said that both the beginning of negotiations and the results should be authorized by referendums.
Photo: Hsieh Chieh-yu, Taipei Times
“That means a total of 68.3 percent of those polled would grant a go-ahead to negotiations for a peace deal only after a national referendum,” TISR general manager Tai Li-an (戴立安) said in a press release.
Approximately the same percentage of respondents, 67.9 percent, opposed the notion that if a cross-strait peace pact was signed, unification with China should be recognized as a national goal, with 17.2 percent supportive and 15 percent declining to provide an answer.
In a question that allowed respondents to make multiple choices, most expressed support for increased bilateral exchanges, including mutual visits by officials of the Mainland Affairs Council and China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (60.2 percent), the establishment of representative offices on each other’s territory (57.5 percent) and shortening Chinese spouses’ waiting period for identification cards from six years to four (52.4 percent).
The support rate for trade pacts were lower, with 35.2 percent of those polled supporting a cross-strait trade in goods agreement and 31.8 percent supportive of the service trade pact, which was signed in June.
The respondents’ reaction to the order of priority between the service trade agreement and the trade in goods agreement, which is yet to be signed, appeared to be split, with 36.2 percent saying that the trade in goods pact could be signed before the current dispute over the service trade pact is settled, 42.7 percent opposing the proposal and 22.8 percent declining to answer.
The poll found Ma’s approval rating remained low at 14.3 percent, while his disapproval rating was 71.7 percent.
“A notable fact was that Ma’s disapproval rating was around 80 percent among respondents between 20 and 49 years old,” Tai said.
Premier Jiang Yi-huah’s (江宜樺) disapproval rating of 58.6 percent was the highest since he assumed the post in February, according to the poll.
The survey, conducted between Monday and Tuesday, collected 1,007 valid samples and had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
‘EFFECTIVE DETERRENCE’: If the Biden administration suspends arms sales to Taiwan, the military could still ready a nimble fighting force for defense, an analyst said The “US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific” last week sparked debate among analysts after US President Donald Trump declassified the document 20 years ahead of schedule. Trump on Tuesday last week released the document that had governed US strategic action in the region since the US leader approved its use in 2018. The document, which outlines US priorities in the region, emphasizes the importance of defending Taiwan against military aggression and facilitating the country’s development of asymmetric strategies and capabilities. The overall directive of the document is for the US to prevent China from establishing sustained air and sea dominance inside the first
SECOND RULING: Israeli-American Oren Shlomo Mayer refused to sign a court transcript, complained about the court translator and said the trial had been unfair The High Court yesterday upheld New Taipei City District Court’s verdicts on four men convicted last year in connection with the 2018 murder and dismemberment of a Canadian citizen on the banks of the Sindian River (新店溪). It found American-Israeli Oren Shlomo Mayer and American Ewart Odane Bent guilty of homicide and the abandonment and destruction of a corpse, with Mayer sentenced to life in prison and Bent given a term of 12 years and six months, for the death of Sanjay Ryan Ramgahan, whose body parts were found in a riverside park under Zhongzheng Bridge in New Taipei’s Yonghe
ALLEVIATING FEARS: The CECC would only announce public places where it is difficult to identify everyone there at the same time as the couple, minister Chen said The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday announced six places where two locally infected COVID-19 cases had visited between Thursday last week and Sunday, urging people who had been at the places at the same time to monitor their health. The couple, cases 838, a doctor, and 839, his nurse girlfriend, were reported by the center on Tuesday. The doctor had treated a patient with COVID-19 last week before he began suffering symptoms on Friday, while the nurse began suffering symptoms on Saturday. They work in the same hospital in northern Taiwan, but the nurse had not worked with COVID-19 patients, so
A lawyer and a prosecutor yesterday castigated what they called a lenient ruling by the High Court on Luo Wen-shan (羅文山), whose prison sentence was reduced to two years, which he does not need to serve, after he was convicted for receiving illegal political donations from China to meddle in Taiwan’s elections. Investigators found that Luo, who retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant general, had accepted NT$8.38 million (US$294,604 at the current exchange rate) under the guise of political contributions from Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference member Xu Zhiming (許智明) and people in Hong Kong from 2008 to