Nearly 80 percent of Taiwanese believe that China is unfriendly toward Taiwan, according to a survey released yesterday by the Cross-Strait Policy Association.
The poll showed that 10.3 percent believe that China is friendly toward Taiwan, down from 15.5 percent in January.
The poll showed that 83.5 percent believe China’s actions toward Taiwan do not help cross-strait relations, while 5 percent believe that they do.
According to the poll, 64.4 percent of Taiwanese believe that China’s suppression of Taiwan would result in worse cross-strait relations, while 56 percent believe that the Chinese government is damaging the cross-strait “status quo.”
Nearly 30 percent believe that the Taiwanese government is damaging the “status quo,” the poll showed.
Forty-seven percent of respondents believed that the Taiwanese government is working hard to maintain the cross-strait “status quo,” while 21 percent believed that it is the Chinese government that is working hard, the poll showed.
The poll also showed that 31 percent of respondents believed that Taiwan should accept the so-called “1992 consensus,” while 53 percent believe that it should not.
The “1992 consensus” — a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 admitted making up in 2000 — refers to a tacit understanding between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party that both sides acknowledge that there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said at a news conference held to release the results that almost the entire international community knows that China is the one that is changing the cross-strait “status quo,” but 30 percent of Taiwanese believe that the Taiwanese government is the one damaging the “status quo.”
Obviously, there is a significant gap between public opinion in Taiwan and the international community, he said, adding that the gap is a reflection of the differing opinions of the pan-blue and pan-green camps that affects objective judgement of the facts.
In the past two to three decades, China’s tactics toward Taiwan have not changed, Taiwan Thinktank consultant Tung Li-wen (董立文) said.
Through diplomatic suppression and military threats, these tactics have caused Taiwanese to become further distanced from the idea of “one China,” Tung said.
Although China continues to emphasize that the two sides are “one family,” and it has introduced 31 measures aimed at attracting Taiwanese, it has continued to shrink Taiwan’s diplomatic space, revealing a huge contradiction in Beijing’s policy, he said.
That 31 percent of respondents believe Taiwan should accept the so-called “1992 consensus” and 30 percent believe that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration is damaging the “status quo” shows the government needs to better explain its policies to win more support, he added.
The poll was conducted via telephone on Wednesday and Thursday. It had a sample size of 1,075 adults and a margin of error of 2.99 percentage points.
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