Most Taiwanese do not agree with China’s “one country, two systems” formula for unification and believe the nation’s future should be decided by its people, a survey released by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday showed.
In the survey, which was conducted by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center from Wednesday to Sunday last week, 79 percent of respondents rejected the “one country, two systems” concept, which would make Taiwan a special administrative region of China.
Only 10.4 percent of respondents accepted the formula, while 10.5 percent said they had no opinion.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
The government has already taken countermeasures against a five-point proposal announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Jan. 2, council spokesman Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said, adding that the results of the survey proved that Taiwanese oppose China’s propaganda and divisiveness.
Meanwhile, 83.9 percent of respondents rejected the use of force by China against Taiwan, while 87.7 percent said that Taiwan’s future and cross-strait relations should be decided by Taiwan’s 23 million people.
The survey also found that 83.9 percent support exchanges between Taiwan and China being undertaken on the basis of equality and mutual respect, without political preconditions and based on the law.
Eight out of 10 respondents said that the government should have better legislative and monitoring mechanisms before engaging in political negotiations or signing agreements with China.
Almost 90 percent of respondents said that the “status quo” across the Taiwan Strait should be maintained.
The telephone survey collected data from 1,093 people aged 20 or above. It has a margin of error of 2.96 percentage points and a confidence level of 95 percent.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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