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• Americans concerned over cross-strait tensions: survey

  ACROSS THE DIVIDE: About 76% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans see the Taiwan-China conflict as important to US national interests, a Pew Research Center poll said

  • By Jonathan Chin / Staff writer, with CNA
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  While three-quarters of Americans see tensions between Taiwan and China as important to US national interests, older respondents are more concerned about the conflict than their younger counterparts, a Pew Research Center survey published on Friday said.

  Thirty percent of respondents view cross-strait tensions as “somewhat important” to US national interests and 45 percent think they are “very important,” the survey of 5,618 US adults from Jan. 22 to Jan. 28 showed.

  Asked how important Taiwan-China tensions are to them personally, 34 percent said they view them as “somewhat important,” while 23 percent said they believe they are “very important,” the survey showed.

  

  A US flag flies outside of the US Capitol dome in Washington on Jan. 15, 2020.

  Photo: Reuters

  About 76 percent of Democrats and 78 percent of Republicans said tensions across the Strait are important to US national interests, it showed, suggesting partisanship has little effect on US assessments of the issue.

  However, 62 percent of Republicans see tensions between Taiwan and China as important to them personally, higher than the 56 percent of Democrats who hold this view.

  Older Americans are more likely to find the Taiwan Strait issue to be important than younger ones, the poll showed.

  According to the survey, 88 percent of Americans over 65 years of age and 82 percent of Americans aged 50 to 64 see Taiwan-China tensions as important to US national interests.

  Meanwhile, 69 percent of Americans between 30 and 49 years old, and 63 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 years old, view the conflict as important to national interests, the poll showed.

  This shows a 25 percentage point difference between the oldest and youngest groups, the poll showed.

  The survey revealed that 77 percent of Americans over 65 years old and 65 percent of Americans aged 50 to 64 see cross-strait tensions as important to them personally.

  Meanwhile, 48 percent of Americans between 30 and 49 years old and 40 percent of those aged 18 to 29 view the tensions as personally important.

  This highlights a 37 percentage point gap between the youngest and oldest Americans in their personal perception of cross-strait tensions.

  The survey also covered other conflicts, with 75 percent of Americans saying the Israel-Hamas conflict is important to US interests, while 74 percent see the Russia-Ukraine conflict as important to US interests.

  Data from the survey showed that 81 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans see the war between Russia and Ukraine as important to national interests — a partisan difference of 12 percentage points, the highest among the three conflicts.

  The Israel-Hamas conflict is the only crisis seen as personally important by a majority of every age group, although older Americans are still more likely to find personal importance in the conflict than younger ones.

  Eighty-one percent of US residents over 65 years of age and 54 percent of those between 18 and 29 years of age see the conflict between Israel and Hamas as personally important, a 16 percentage point difference, the smallest among the three crises.
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