The perception of US military assistance might increase local support for declaring de jure Taiwanese independence, a recent study by Academia Sinica and the National Defense University found.
Threats of military action from Beijing appeared to have no effect on respondents’ views, it found.
Respondents were divided into three groups: one that was shown an infographic on US military aircraft activity in Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), another that was shown an infographic on Chinese military aircraft activity in the same area and a control group that was not shown anything.
Photo: AP
The respondents were then asked to evaluate the probability of a situation coming to pass on a scale of one to six.
Support for independence among those shown the US aircraft was 9.69 percentage points higher than for the control group, while the difference in support for independence between those shown the Chinese aircraft and the control group was “statistically insignificant,” the study said.
Exposure to the Chinese aircraft infographic did not significantly affect respondents’ perception of the likelihood of Beijing launching a military invasion, it said.
The intensification of threats from Beijing since 2016 might have alarmed respondents to the point that additional information concerning military incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ no longer makes a difference to them, the study said.
Respondents shown the US aircraft infographic were more likely to believe that the US would provide military support to Taiwan in the event of a war than the control group by 0.32 points (on the scale from one to six), while respondents in the Chinese group were more likely to hold this belief than the latter by 0.26 points, it said.
A possible explanation is that respondents might already believe US intervention is likely if China attacks, and therefore evidence of Chinese military activity enhanced that perception, the study said, adding that more research is needed.
The findings suggest that Washington’s policy of “strategic ambiguity” might have discouraged Taiwan from declaring de jure independence or otherwise provoking Beijing, which is an argument utilized by the policy’s proponents, the study said.
The study involved in-person interviews with 600 respondents in October and November 2020. It was published in The China Quarterly journal on Monday last week.
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