Eighty-six percent of respondents to a poll by the Chinese-language United Daily News said they believe the nation has been “stuck” for the past 11 years.
The poll, released yesterday, found that 86 percent of the respondents said they attribute the perceived national weakness to national policies becoming “stuck or stagnant,” and on average they believe the stagnation to have occurred 11 years ago.
Forty-one percent of the survey respondents said they felt the nation became “stuck” during President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, while 39 percent of respondents said they felt national stagnation to have occurred during former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration.
Twelve percent said they believed the stagnancy began under former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) or Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).
Among the self-reported supporters of the pan-blue camp, 43 percent said Taiwan’s stagnation began during Chen’s presidency, while 37 percent of pan-blue supporters said it began on Ma’s watch.
Forty-eight percent of self-reported pan-green voters said national stagnation began during Ma’s administration, while 38 percent said it started during Chen’s presidency.
In a multiple-choice section in the survey, respondents were asked to identify the causes that are responsible for impairing the performance of the nation.
Seventy-four percent identified partisanship and the political parties’ pursuit of selfish interests as the problem, while 43 percent blamed legislative inefficiency.
Only about 20 percent of respondents agreed that Taiwan’s problems are caused by the unwillingness of talented people to serve in the government, or that there is too much democracy in Taiwan, the poll said.
When asked about their hopes for president-elect Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) new government 64 percent of respondents said they believe Tsai should prioritize improving governmental efficiency, while 17 percent said that legislative reforms are urgent and 10 percent expressed a preference for constitutional reforms.
However, respondents predominantly said that they hoped the government could become more efficient without weakening the democratic process of negotiations and consensus-building, the poll showed.
Fifty-eight percent of the poll’s respondents said they prefer a government to respect democracy and engage consensus-building through negotiations, and 33 percent said they prefer a more centralized and efficient government.
Of constitutional reform proposals known to the public, the most popular was allowing absentee ballots for citizens to vote in areas other than the districts to which they were registered, with a support rating of 67 percent. The measure was opposed by 29 percent of respondents.
A majority of 58 percent of respondents said they are not in favor of a constitutional amendment lowering the voting age to 18 years, while 38 percent expressed support, the survey found.
Meanwhile, the survey showed respondents gave the nation’s overall performance a failing average grade of 56 out of 100 points on average.
The poll was conducted from Feb. 15 to Feb. 19. It had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, with 1019 valid samples, while 649 people refused to answer.

The German city of Hamburg on Oct. 14 named a bridge “Kaohsiung-Brucke” after the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. The footbridge, formerly known as F566, is to the east of the Speicherstadt, the world’s largest warehouse district, and connects the Dar-es-Salaam-Platz to the Brooktorpromenade near the Port of Hamburg on the Elbe River. Timo Fischer, a Free Democratic Party member of the Hamburg-Mitte District Assembly, in May last year proposed the name change with support from members of the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union. Kaohsiung and Hamburg in 1999 inked a sister city agreement, but despite more than a quarter-century of

Taiwanese officials are courting podcasters and influencers aligned with US President Donald Trump as they grow more worried the US leader could undermine Taiwanese interests in talks with China, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has said Taiwan would likely be on the agenda when he is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) next week in a bid to resolve persistent trade tensions. China has asked the White House to officially declare it “opposes” Taiwanese independence, Bloomberg reported last month, a concession that would mark a major diplomatic win for Beijing. President William Lai (賴清德) and his top officials

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday expressed “grave concerns” after Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) reiterated the city-state’s opposition to “Taiwanese independence” during a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強). In Singapore on Saturday, Wong and Li discussed cross-strait developments, the Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “Prime Minister Wong reiterated that Singapore has a clear and consistent ‘one China’ policy and is opposed to Taiwan independence,” it said. MOFA responded that it is an objective fact and a common understanding shared by many that the Republic of China (ROC) is an independent, sovereign nation, with world-leading

‘ONE CHINA’: A statement that Berlin decides its own China policy did not seem to sit well with Beijing, which offered only one meeting with the German official German Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul’s trip to China has been canceled, a spokesperson for his ministry said yesterday, amid rising tensions between the two nations, including over Taiwan. Wadephul had planned to address Chinese curbs on rare earths during his visit, but his comments about Berlin deciding on the “design” of its “one China” policy ahead of the trip appear to have rankled China. Asked about Wadephul’s comments, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) said the “one China principle” has “no room for any self-definition.” In the interview published on Thursday, Wadephul said he would urge China to