A recent survey found that most people approved of the outcome of a historic meeting between the top officials of the Mainland Affairs Council and China’s Taiwan Affairs Office earlier this month, the council said in a statement on Tuesday.
More than 60 percent of the respondents to a poll commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council said they approved of council Minister Wang Yu-chi’s (王郁琦) Feb. 11 to Feb. 14 visit to China, the council said.
Wang met Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) in Nanjing on Feb. 11.
The survey found that 65.1 percent of respondents felt that Wang’s trip and his meeting with Zhang helped direct interactions between officials from the two sides, while 61 percent felt the trip would help the development of cross-strait links, the council said.
Fifty-one percent of respondents said the Wang-Zhang meeting was “a major breakthrough” in official cross-strait interaction, 67.1 percent supported the idea of top officials from the council and the TAO continuing to hold meetings and 63.1 percent supported the establishment of a regular communication mechanism between the two agencies, the council said.
It said it will make efforts to promote the formation of such a mechanism to handle major issues.
The survey also found that 67.9 percent of respondents supported the signing of a cross-strait agreement on meteorological cooperation, the council said.
A seismic monitoring cooperation agreement set to be signed by the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits was backed by 72.6 percent of respondents, the council said.
The telephone survey was conducted by Taiwan Real Survey Co from Feb. 20 to Feb. 22 among people aged over 20. A total of 1,068 valid samples were collected and the survey had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
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