About 50 percent of teenagers are uninterested in China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, the South China Sea dispute and other global issues that are closely related to Taiwan, a global perspective survey released on Thursday showed.
The poll, conducted by the King Car Cultural and Educational Foundation in September, canvassed 2,501 junior-high, senior-high and college students.
The survey found that 50.3 percent of teenagers are unfamiliar with the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, while 46.9 percent have limited knowledge about territorial disputes in the South China Sea, where Taiwan claims sovereignty over territories including the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島).
Photo: Wu Po-hsuan, Taipei Times
Due to the government’s New Southbound Policy, 66.1 percent of teenagers are willing to consider studying or working in Southeast Asia, the survey showed.
Regarding international relations, the survey found that 72.4 percent of teenagers believe that Japan is the nation friendliest toward Taiwan, followed by the US at 43.1 percent and South Korea at 24.8 percent.
Central and South America and the nation’s African allies ranked fifth and seventh respectively in terms of friendliness to Taiwan, the poll showed.
Besides Mandarin and English, 40.5 percent of teenagers believe that Taiwanese need to improve their Japanese-language skills the most, followed by European languages (20.9 percent), Korean (13.8 percent) and Southeast Asian languages (13.1 percent), the foundation said.
The poll found that 74.2 percent of teenagers believe that Taiwanese youth need to go abroad in order to obtain a global perspective.
When asked to rate their own level of global perspective and that of the general public, respondents gave both groups a score of less than 60 out of 100, the foundation said.
National Chengchi University College of International Affairs vice dean Huang Kwei-Bo (黃奎博) said the survey’s results showed that there is room for improvement in the global perspectives of teenagers.
They also suggested that international affairs topics might feel too distant for teenagers, leading them to be uninterested in global issues, foundation secretary-general Tseng Ching-yun (曾清芸) said.
Teenagers’ global perspective is too focused on a few nations, Tseng said, adding that this might be due to the influence of history, popular culture and the media.
She expressed concern that this might create a gap between teenagers’ global perspective and the real world.
Tseng made several suggestions on how teachers can cultivate a global perspective among students, including encouraging them to care about international news, to go on a working holiday, or to become an exchange student.
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