A majority of people polled in a Taiwan Indicator Survey Research (TISR) survey are not confident that defensive weapons systems provided by the US provide the nation with an effective defense capability.
The survey was conducted from Monday to Wednesday, with part of its questions aimed at gauging the public’s perception of relations between Taiwan and the US as the two countries marked the 35th anniversary of the enactment of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).
Enacted in 1979 after the US switched diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China to the People’s Republic of China, the TRA provided the legal basis for the unofficial relationship between the two countries.
On a question of whether Taiwan is able to maintain sufficient self-defense capabilities using defense systems provided by the US, 57.4 percent of respondents said they are not confident about that, compared with 26.4 percent who said they are confident, while 16.2 percent of respondents did not express their views.
TISR general manager Tai Li-an (戴立安) said this result can be attributed to China’s recent military expansion, the provision of US weapons of defense only, as opposed to combat weapons, and the government’s limited budget allocation for arms procurement.
The percentage of people who think the US attaches importance to its relations with Taiwan decreased from 47.3 percent in 2009 to 44.7 percent last year, and to 40.9 percent now, while people who do not think that the US values its relations with Taiwan rose from 37.3 percent in 2009 to 38.4 percent last year and 39 percent now.
Despite slight changes in the percentages, the trend showed that US policy toward Taiwan has been perceived as deemed by the US a sub-issue to its relationship with China, Tai said.
The poll also showed that people are steadfast in their opposition to opening the local market to US pork products containing residues of the leanness-enhancing animal feed additive ractopamine, even below a permissible limit as in the safety standards applying to US beef products, with 74.2 percent of respondents saying they are opposed to abandoning the zero-tolerance policy for ractopamine residue in pork.
Only 16.8 percent of the respondents found the same safety standards for US beef and pork acceptable, while 9 percent did not give their views, according to the poll results.
Taiwan in 2012 eased a ban on imports of beef containing ractopamine residues after the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the international food standards body, allowed certain levels of ractopamine in beef and pork, but the nation has kept the ban on pork in place to protect the local hog industry and public health.
TENSE SITUATION: If the storm does not bring rain, Taiwan might have to wait until next month amid water scarcity in the center and south, an expert said Typhoon Surigae is to bring rain to the nation’s east coast and mountainous areas in central and southern Taiwan from Wednesday to Friday, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the typhoon’s center was 1,170km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip. The radius of the storm was 280km, and it was moving northwest at 9kph, with a maximum wind speed of 198kph. The bureau forecasts that the storm would switch to a northerly direction when approaching the east coast of Luzon Island in the Philippines on Wednesday, CWB forecaster Lin Ding-yi (林定宜) said, adding that Surigae would
SEEKING CLARITY: Some members of the US delegation asked KMT legislators in a meeting to address their party’s position on the so-called ‘1992 consensus,’ sources said A US delegation tasked by US President Joe Biden to reaffirm the country’s commitment to its partnership with Taiwan yesterday wrapped up a three-day visit to Taipei. Former US senator Chris Dodd, former US deputy secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Steinberg, and US Department of State Office of Taiwan Coordination Director Dan Biers departed at 11:20am on a private jet. The members of the delegation, all friends of Biden, arrived on Wednesday and met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and other government officials. During the three-day visit, the delegation also met with six members of the Legislative
Taipei’s street names should reflect a “Taiwanese spirit,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said in an online video released yesterday, in which he asked why many of them are named after locations in China. In a three-minute video uploaded to a Facebook page called “Taiwanese Uncle Ko Wen-je” (台灣阿北柯文哲), the mayor suggested changing the names of Taipei streets. The page’s banner was a photograph of Ko on Jade Mountain’s (玉山) main peak. The page was closed at about noon, about four hours after it was made public. Ko said that street names in the capital named “Ningxia,” “Tibet,” “Beiping” — an old name for
‘AN EXCUSE’: The intent of Beijing’s incursions was ‘intimidation and coercion,’ a senior US official said, adding that China was using the US to justify its actions Chinese carrier drills and stepped-up incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in the past few weeks are meant to send a message to Washington to stand down and back off, security sources in Taipei said. The increased activity — which China, unusually, described as “combat drills” on Wednesday — has raised alarm in both Taipei and Washington, although security officials do not see it as a sign of an imminent attack. Rather, at least some of the exercises are practicing “access denial” maneuvers to prevent foreign forces from coming to Taipei’s defense in a war, one official familiar with Taiwan’s security
RSS