Two-thirds of Taiwanese opposed Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) recent remark that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China,” a poll conducted by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) found.
On Monday, before a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), Chu said that in 1992, through the efforts of Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, a consensus was reached that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China,” but with each side ascribing different content and definitions to the concept of “one China.”
The DPP poll asked respondents whether they agreed that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China,” with 66.7 percent disagreeing and 23.3 percent agreeing, DPP spokesperson Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said.
The survey found that half (50.4 percent) agreed with the statement that “the development of cross-strait relations in recent years has been only relations between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party.”
About three-fifths of the respondents (59.1 percent) said the dividends reaped from the development of cross-strait relations went to a few people.
The survey was conducted from Monday to Wednesday via telephone calls to 1,021 people, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
In response, a KMT spokesman said the survey lacked credibility.
The DPP survey failed to present Chu’s comprehensive views on cross-strait ties, misleading the public, KMT spokesman director Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中) said.
Chu has said that “both sides belong to one China, but its content and definition are different,” Yang said, adding that even though Chu emphasized that “one China meant the Republic of China,” his words were taken out of context by the DPP poll.
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