Half of Taiwanese support independence, according to the results of a poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, which also found that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) support rating fell by 7 percentage points.
Fifty percent of respondents supported independence, 25.7 percent supported maintaining the “status quo” and 11.8 percent supported unification, while 12.1 percent had no opinion, did not know or refused to answer, the foundation said.
Support for independence is the new mainstream opinion, regardless of which party is in power, foundation chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said.
Photo: Tien Su-hua, Taipei Times
Insinuations that Taiwan wants to maintain the “status quo” are a fabrication that could severely mislead the international community, he added.
Fifty-three percent of respondents welcomed US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, while 24 percent did not and 23 percent had no opinion.
The poll found that 55.2 percent think Chinese military exercises would decrease the willingness of Taiwanese to unify with China, 17.5 percent said they would reinforce such feelings and 8.1 percent said they would have no effect, while 12 percent had no opinion and 7.2 percent did not know.
Asked about the likelihood that China might attack Taiwan, about 36 percent said an invasion was highly improbable, 26.7 percent said there was some possibility, 16.7 percent said it was impossible, 12.3 percent said it was highly possible and 8.4 percent had no opinion.
Compared with last month, support for Tsai’s performance dropped by 7 percentage points to 45.7 percent. Meanwhile, dissatisfaction with her performance increased by 5.6 percentage points to 40.7 percent.
It is highly unusual for the support rating to drop so dramatically, especially given Pelosi’s visit and Chinese military drills, as presidents usually enjoy a boost in popular support when facing external pressures, You said.
The most probable explanation is internal politics, namely dissatisfaction with Tsai’s security leadership and a plagiarism scandal involving former Hsinchu mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅), he said.
Former Democratic Progressive Party legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) said the Tsai administration’s response to China’s military exercises was weak and slow, as Taiwanese learned that Beijing had fired ballistic missiles over Taiwan from Japanese reports and not from the government.
The poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday last week, polled people aged 20 or older by telephone. It collected 1,035 valid samples, with a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 3.05 percentage points.
China’s Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong has asked foreign consulates in Hong Kong to submit details of their local staff, which is more proof that the “one country, two systems” model no longer exists, a Taiwanese academic said. The office sent letters dated Monday last week to consulates in the territory, giving them one month to submit the information it requires. The move followed Beijing’s attempt to obtain floor plans for all properties used by foreign missions in Hong Kong last year, which raised concerns among diplomats that the information could be used for
‘ABNORMITY’: News of the military exercises on the coast of the Chinese province facing Taiwan were made public by the Ministry of National Defense on Thursday Taiwan’s military yesterday said it has detected the Chinese military initiating a round of exercises at a bay area in coastal Fujian Province, which faces Taiwan, since early yesterday morning and it has been closely monitoring the drills. The exercises being conducted at Fujian’s Dacheng Bay featured an undisclosed number of People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) warplanes, warships and ground troops, the Ministry of National Defense said in a press statement. The ministry did not disclose what kind of military exercises are being conducted there and for how long they would be happening, but it did say that it has been closely watching
Vice President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that Beijing was trying to “annex” Taiwan, while China said its recent series of drills near Taiwan are aimed at combating the “arrogance” of separatist forces. The Ministry of National Defense earlier this month said that it had observed dozens of Chinese fighters, drones, bombers and other aircraft, as well as warships and the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong, operating nearby. The increased frequency of China’s military activities has raised the risk of events “getting out of hand” and sparking an accidental clash, Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) said last week. Asked about the spurt
Noting that researchers have found that 85 China-based blogs and accounts were spreading a conspiracy theory that a US “meteorological weapon” had caused recent fires in Hawaii, political observers in Taiwan said the nation also needs to be vigilant of Beijing employing similar disinformation campaigns against Taiwan. The untrue content concerning Hawaii was written in 15 languages and disseminated across a myriad of platforms including Facebook, YouTube and X, a report published in Gizmodo said, citing NewsGuard, an online news content ranker. The effort represented the most expansive Chinese informational operation to be uncovered by NewsGuard to date, Gizmodo said. The conspiracy theory
RSS