The Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday that it is considering adjusting cross-strait policies as a new poll showed 93.4 percent of respondents, which included people from all major political parties, oppose Beijing's resorting to non-peaceful means to solve its sovereignty disputes with Taipei.
The opinion poll, conducted by the Institute for National Policy Research (INPR) from March 9 to 12, was the first one since China unveiled the draft of its proposed "anti-secession" law. Two previous surveys on the legislation were done in December and last month.
The latest poll, for which 1,067 people were interviewed, showed that while 83.9 percent of the respondents rejected the claim in the bill that Taiwan is part of China, 70.9 percent said they disagreed that foreign countries should not allowed to get involved in solving the Taiwan question because it is China's internal affair.
The poll found that 79.1 percent of the respondents believe the Chinese authorities are unfriendly toward the Taiwanese government, while 62.8 percent feel the Chinese authorities are unfriendly to the Taiwanese people.
Ninety-one percent of respondents agreed that the Republic of China's (ROC) sovereignty belongs to its 23 million people and that all moves to change the ROC's status quo have to be approved by its people, according to the poll.
Council Vice Chairman David Huang (黃偉峰), who was at an INPR seminar yesterday that analyzed the poll results, said the people of Taiwan had been repelled by the anti-secession proposal.
The authorization of the use of non-peaceful means against Taiwan "exposes China's brutal policy toward Taiwan, proving that China's claimed efforts to promote peaceful exchanges with Taiwan are false slogans," Huang said.
China's real purpose in enacting the law is to carry out a military invasion and destroy the status quo across the Taiwan Strait, he said.
"No matter how the Chinese authorities try to hide or belie their purpose, their deceitfulness and intention to invade are revealed in the proposed law," Huang said.
Urging Beijing to "step back from the edge of the cliff," Huang said the council would review and adjust current cross-strait policy if relations between Taiwan and China suffer great setbacks because of the legislation.
Asked how the government should respond to the threat posed by the proposed law, 55.7 percent of respondents felt the government should increase the defense budget for arms purchases and 57.9 percent said Taiwan should hold a national referendum to counter the legislation.
Hsu Jung-ming (徐永明), a research assistant at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at Academia Sinica, said that it was remarkable that even if 65 percent of the respondents said they do not belong to any political party, the poll showed that more than 50 percent believed the government should increase the defense budget and hold a referendum to counter the law.
Hsu said that Beijing's goal of widening the division in Taiwanese society over cross-strait issues by introducing the bill seems to have failed. China wanted to distinguish between independence-minded Taiwanese and unification-minded ones by observing their responses to the law, but the poll results suggests Beijing might have helped people accept President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) consensus with People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) over the country's status, Hsu said.
The sense that the country is facing a threat from China because of the law has unified society, he said.
"Beijing does not want the international community to regard it as a bellicose regime, but the law makes it look exactly like that. If President Chen responds cautiously to the law, the government would likely be seen as a peace-loving administration," Hsu said.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
RSS