Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters appeared to be struggling with the party’s position toward Beijing as a considerable percentage of them agreed that a revised and more moderate China policy would likely increase the party’s chances of returning to power, a survey released yesterday showed.
Of the respondents who identified themselves as DPP supporters in a public opinion poll conducted by Taiwan Indicators Survey Research (TISR), 39.5 percent said that it is necessary for the party to formulate a “more moderate” China policy, while 23.3 percent deemed it unnecessary and 8.7 percent preferred a more conservative policy.
If the DPP pledged that it would not change the nation’s name, the national anthem, the national flag or draft a new Constitution, 51.9 percent of DPP supporters said the party’s chances of returning to power would increase, while 29.2 percent said its chances would remain unchanged and 3.9 percent said that its chances would decrease.
If the party announced its acceptance of the Constitution and the so-called “1992 consensus,” 44.9 percent of DPP supporters responded that would increase the party’s chances of winning the next presidential election, while 24.3 percent said its chances would stay the same and 17.1 percent said that the party’s chances would decrease.
The percentage of the DPP supporters who predicted positive results if the party adopted a more moderate China policy or thought the policy should be fine-tuned was higher than that of the general public.
However, the percentage of DPP supporters who said they found the party “more credible” following the policy change was lower than that of the general public, according to TISR.
“It seems to me that DPP supporters are caught in a paradox, as they see the change critical for winning back power, but would find the party less trustworthy if it did,” TISR general manager Tai Li-an (戴立安) said in a press release.
The survey, which ran from Monday to Wednesday, had 1,000 valid samples and had 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