About half of the public believes that it would be a “serious matter” if President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) doctoral dissertation is not authentic, a survey released yesterday by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation found.
Asked whether they knew about the controversy surrounding the authenticity of Tsai’s doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), 63 percent of respondents said “yes,” while 37 percent said “no.”
While 50.9 percent of respondents said that it would be serious if Tsai’s dissertation was proved problematic, 39.6 percent said that even so, it would not be a serious matter, while 4.5 percent said that they did not have an opinion on the matter.
A total of 49.7 percent of respondents said they did not believe that Tsai’s dissertation was problematic, while 24.6 percent said that they did and 13 percent had no opinion.
Tsai’s greatest mistake was that she did not personally present the dissertation — assuming that it is genuine — to refute the allegations at the earliest chance, which in turn fueled the controversy, foundation chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said.
Taiwan Association for China Human Rights chairman Yang Sen-hong (楊憲宏) said that while Tsai sought to counter the allegations by publishing the original version of the dissertation on Monday, she did not preside over the news conference and that the so-called “original” — a stack of unbound papers — was not the final product.
Asked about the nation’s decreasing number of diplomatic allies, 42.8 percent of respondents said that they were worried, with 20.2 percent saying that they were “very worried.”
However, 52.9 percent of respondents said they were not worried, with 28.1 percent saying that they were “not worried at all.”
Compared with the results of a survey released in June 2017 after Panama severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan, those “worried” dropped by 3.8 percentage points, while those unfazed by such an incident increased by 5.3 percentage points.
Instead of “terrorizing small nations” with the consequences of switching recognition from Taiwan to China, Washington should establish formal diplomatic ties with Taipei, especially if a trade dispute ends up hurting the US more than China, University of Taipei associate professor Timothy Ting (丁庭宇) said.
If the US is serious about confronting China, it should forge ties with Taiwan, he said.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) should be bold and proactively push for formal ties with Washington, just as the government once proposed that it assist US troops at the beginning of the Korean War by providing aircraft, personnel and other supplies, Ting added.
Asked which presidential candidate or hopeful has the highest morals, 47.7 percent of respondents said Tsai, 20.5 percent said former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), an independent, and 18.7 percent said Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate.
Asked who they would vote for in a one-on-one race, 53.6 percent of respondents said Tsai, while 30.9 percent said that they would vote for Han, while 14.8 percent were undecided.
The survey suggested that after Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) decided not to run, about 70 percent of their supporters are inclined to vote for Tsai, while Han only siphoned off about 5 percent, You said, citing a comparison of the results with those of a survey in July, when the support ratings of Tsai, Han, Ko and Gou were 29.7 percent, 29.3 percent, 18.3 percent and 15.9 percent respectively.
If Han does not come up with a game-changing plan, he is likely set for a landslide defeat, You said.
However, Yang said that remains to be seen, as People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) is reportedly contemplating joining the race and there is speculation about a possible ticket between Ko and New Power Party Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌).
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods