A narrow majority of Americans would support committing US troops to defend Taiwan if China were to invade, a survey said on Wednesday.
The study by the Eurasia Group Foundation found that 42 percent of Americans would “somewhat support intervention” to support Taiwan and another 18 percent would “strongly” back intervention.
US President Joe Biden has publicly said he would back sending US forces to defend Taiwan, despite the official US position of ambiguity.
Photo: EPA
Mark Hannah, a senior fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation, said that support for intervention in Taiwan could be linked in part to the negative image in the US of China, which has faced wide criticism on issues from trade to human rights.
“China is perceived as a bad actor and there could be a rally-around-the-flag effect if they invaded an island that is democratic and has been a long-term partner of the United States,” he said.
The survey took responses from 1,000 US adults from Aug. 28 to Sept. 6.
It found broad support for Taiwan, but Republicans were most likely to back intervention strongly.
Support was flipped on Ukraine, with backers of Biden’s Democratic Party most enthusiastic about the robust US support for Ukraine, which has been criticized by Republican former US president Donald Trump.
However, in one area that did not entirely mirror political statements, a bipartisan majority of 77 percent said they supported diplomacy with Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
The question did not specifically mention a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran which was negotiated by former US president Barack Obama and trashed by Trump.
A full 67 percent of Americans also said they backed direct negotiations with US adversaries “even if they are human rights abusers, dictators or home to terrorist organizations.”
The survey was taken before a bloody weekend assault on Israel by Islamic movement Hamas, which has support from Iran’s clerical leaders.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
RSS