A large majority of Taiwanese support the building of a “T-Dome” for air defense, and agree that China should renounce the use of force to change the “status quo,” the latest public opinion survey released by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) showed.
In the survey, 81.8 percent of respondents disagreed with Beijing’s official position that “there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China,” MAC Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news conference on Thursday last week.
About 75 percent supported President William Lai’s (賴清德) Double Ten National Day speech, urging Beijing to abandon the use of force or other coercive measures to alter the cross-strait “status quo,” while a similar proportion backed accelerating the development of the “T-Dome” system, he said.
Photo: Taipei Times
Meanwhile, 79.4 percent agreed with Lai’s statement that the Republic of China (ROC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “are not subordinate to each other,” and that “the PRC has no right to take military action against Taiwan.”
In addition, 86.4 percent supported the government’s stance that Taiwan is willing to engage in dialogue with China on the basis of mutual respect to promote peaceful coexistence and shared prosperity, Liang said.
A total of 77.2 percent of respondents said they supported the government’s regular checks on civil servants, military personnel and public-school teachers to ensure they have not registered for Chinese residence permits, taken up employment or obtained Chinese national ID cards, Liang said.
Meanwhile, 63.8 percent agreed that government employees who travel to China, Hong Kong or Macau without prior approval — and without reporting their itineraries and meeting purposes as required by law — should face disciplinary action, he said.
“The survey results indicate that Taiwanese are strongly determined to resist China’s intimidation and coercion, which has been a stable, long-term trend,” he added.
The survey also showed that 69.9 percent of respondents disagreed with the notion that peace can only be guaranteed by adhering to the “one China” principle and the so-called “1992 consensus,” while 87.8 percent opposed China’s military drills around Taiwan.
Regarding Beijing’s cognitive warfare efforts, 83.7 percent of respondents opposed Beijing’s recent move to display “wanted” posters featuring Taiwanese military officers, complete with personal information, saying that they conducted cyberattacks and hacking operations against Chinese facilities, Liang said.
The council cited Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “five-point” proposal — delivered in his Jan. 2, 2019, address marking the 40th anniversary of the “Message to Compatriots in Taiwan” — in which Xi outlined applying the “one country, two systems” model to govern Taiwan and redefined the so-called “1992 consensus” as meaning that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to “one China” and should work together toward unification under the Chinese motherland.
This agenda is firmly opposed by mainstream public opinion in Taiwan, the MAC said.
“China’s slogans and proposals regarding Taiwan are all designed to erase the ROC, annex Taiwan and force unification with the PRC,” Liang said. “These positions deny the existence of the ROC, which is why mainstream public opinion in Taiwan remains firmly opposed to Beijing’s rhetoric.”
The MAC continues to urge “positive and mutually beneficial cross-strait engagement” as the main responsibility of both sides, Liang said, urging Beijing to “take a pragmatic approach toward Taiwan’s mainstream views,” and to abandon the use of military threats and other hostile tactics.
The survey was commissioned by the MAC and conducted via telephone interviews from Oct. 17 to Monday last week among Taiwanese adults aged 20 and older. It collected 1,070 valid responses, with a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
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