Despite China’s increased saber-rattling toward Taiwan over the past two years, most Taiwanese do not believe that war could erupt across the Taiwan Strait, a survey released on Tuesday showed.
Asked whether China would, for any reason, attack Taiwan sooner or later, 23.7 percent of respondents said they completely disagreed with the statement, while 40.6 percent said they did not fully agree with it, the poll showed.
This meant that 64.3 percent of respondents did not think there was a high possibility of a military attack by China, against 28.1 percent who thought the Chinese might attack, the survey by the Taipei-based Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation showed.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Compared with a similar survey conducted two years ago, the percentage of people who thought that a Chinese attack was possible sooner or later increased by 12.1 percentage points, while those who disagreed fell by 13.1 percentage points.
In terms of age, young Taiwanese were more inclined to believe that China would attack Taiwan, with 39 percent of those in the 20-24 age group thinking that Beijing would do so, while 49 percent disagreed.
In the 25-34 age bracket, 63 percent disagreed, outnumbering the 34 percent who agreed.
Among respondents aged 35-64, 67 percent disagreed, far more than the less than 30 percent who agreed.
By education background, more college and university graduates and advanced degree holders tended to think that “there would be a war between Taiwan and China,” while the rest shrugged off the idea, the survey showed.
There was also a clear divide between supporters of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and those of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
About 77 percent of DPP supporters disagreed that a “Chinese attack was possible sooner or later,” while 18 percent agreed.
On the other hand, 59 percent of KMT supporters did not think an attack from China was likely, while 38 percent thought an attack was possible, the survey showed.
In the face of a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan, 48 percent of respondents were confident in the military’s defense capability, marginally higher than 47 percent who were not.
The survey, carried out from Oct. 18 to 20, collected 1,075 valid samples from respondents aged 20 or older. It has a margin of error of 2.99 percentage points.
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
‘ORDINARY PEOPLE’: A man watching Taiwanese military drills said that there would be nothing anyone could do if the situation escalates in the Taiwan Strait Many people in Taiwan look upon China’s military exercises over the past week with calm resignation, doubting that war is imminent and if anything, feeling pride in their nation’s determination to defend itself. After a visit to Taiwan last week by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China has sent ships and aircraft across an unofficial buffer between Taiwan and China’s coast and missiles over Taipei and into waters surrounding the nation since Thursday last week. However, Rosa Chang, proudly watching her son take part in Taiwanese military exercises that included dozens of howitzers firing shells into the Taiwan Strait off
TRAPPED IN CAMBODIA: A woman said that a job offer in Cambodia led to her being imprisoned in a fenced industrial park, where she was sold four times in a week An inter-ministerial task force has been set up by the Executive Yuan to tackle the issue of Taiwanese being lured to Cambodia with promises of high-paying jobs, but getting stuck there as targets of human trafficking, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said on Thursday. Legislators, including Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) of the Democratic Progressive Party, told a news conference that a task force should be set up to address problems exposed by reports of Taiwanese being lured to Cambodia, Myanmar and other countries with promises of lucrative jobs before being forced into illegal work while being subject to abuse. Later in the