The majority of Chinese consider US-China disputes, global pandemic and “international military intervention in Taiwan” the top threats facing China, a poll conducted by a Beijing-based think tank published on Wednesday last week showed.
The poll from the Tsinghua University Center for International Security and Strategy, which was discussed in a report by Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post on Sunday, surveyed Chinese on what issues they felt most threatened China’s security.
The poll found that 74.1 percent of respondents believe there is a “high” or “relatively high” security risk to China due to US-China disputes.
Photo: REUTERS
The risk of a global pandemic and international military intervention in a conflict over Taiwan were the second-highest concerns cited by respondents, tying at 72.4 percent each in the poll.
The news report said that the US was the country most able to affect China’s security, and that most Chinese had a more favorable attitude toward Russia than toward the US.
In order, the countries that respondents felt have the greatest effect on China’s security were the US at 52.7 percent, Russia at 17.7 percent and Japan at 17.1 percent.
In terms of their opinion about other countries, 59.1 percent said they had a “very negative” or “relatively negative” opinion of the US, while 57.5 percent answered similarly about Japan. Asked about Russia, 7.8 percent expressed a negative opinion.
“What deserves our attention is that the people of China and the United States have negative perceptions of each other’s countries,” center director Da Wei (達巍) said, adding that perceptions have gradually deteriorated as the relationship between the two countries worsened.
Da was likely referring to the most recent annual survey by the Pew Research Center in Washington, which showed that a record 83 percent of US respondents held a negative view of China.
The poll also asked respondents about their opinion on the Russia-Ukraine war, to which 80.1 percent said they believed that “the US and other Western countries” were responsible for the war, while 11.7 percent said that Ukraine was responsible and 8.2 percent said that Russia was responsible.
The poll, which surveyed 2,661 people, was conducted in November last year.
At the time of the poll, restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic had not yet been lifted in China, and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was preparing to meet with US President Joe Biden for the first time since Biden took office.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater