The majority of respondents in a survey about Taiwan-China relations support maintaining the “status quo” across the Taiwan Strait, the Mainland Affairs Council said on Thursday.
In a poll of 1,072 people, 84.9 percent said they supported maintaining the “status quo” between Taiwan and China, while 6.8 percent said that Taiwan should declare independence as soon as possible and 1.6 percent said they supported unification with China.
Asked about President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) comments about cross-strait relations in her Double Ten National Day address, 77.1 percent said they supported her views, while 12.3 percent were against them.
Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times
In the speech, Tsai laid out “four commitments”: that the nation will adhere to a free and democratic constitutional system; that the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other; that the nation will resist annexation or encroachment upon its sovereignty; and that the nation’s future must be decided in accordance with the will of Taiwanese.
The survey, commissioned by the council and conducted by National Chengchi University’s Election Study Center, also showed that 77.1 percent of respondents said they felt that Beijing was “unfriendly” toward Taipei, while 9 percent held the opposite view.
On Beijing’s attitude toward Taiwanese, 57.9 percent said it was “unfriendly,” while 29.1 percent said it was “friendly,” the council said.
The poll showed that public opinion remains strongly against Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula, with 85.6 percent opposing it and 5.4 percent agreeing with it.
The “one country, two systems” scheme refers to a principle formulated by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) , in which regions such as Hong Kong and Macau could be part of China while retaining their own economic and administrative systems.
The poll, conducted from Nov. 10-14, had a margin of error of 2.99 percentage points.
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
RSS