Asked if they would be willing to go to war if China attempted to take Taiwan by force, 79.8 percent of respondents said they would, according to a survey released yesterday by the government-funded Taiwan Democracy Foundation.
The figure is 11.6 percentage points higher than when the same question asked in a survey last year.
The results showed that 12.7 percent of respondents said that they would be unwilling to go to war, down from 20.5 percent in the survey last year.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
In a scenario where China attacks because Taiwan had declared independence, 71.5 percent said that they would be willing to defend Taiwan, up 14.1 percentage points from the survey last year, while 19.8 percent said that they would be unwilling to go to war.
The considerable increase from last year to this year regarding those willing to defend Taiwan was perhaps attributable to China’s frequent incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, which has buoyed the public’s trust in democracy and a determination to safeguard the nation, Academia Sinica Institute of Sociology deputy director Chen Chih-jou (陳志柔) told a news conference held by the foundation.
The survey, conducted by the foundation from May 6 to May 10, collected 1,226 valid samples and had a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.
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