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.
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.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by