A new public opinion survey shows that 63.4% of respondents support Taiwan’s “peaceful independence” and 44.2% support “war independence”. Both figures are at 16-year highs.
The Taiwan Elections and Democratization Survey (TEDS) commissioned the Center for Electoral Studies at National Chengchi University to compile statistics on “whether Taiwanese people support Taiwan’s independence” over the past 16 years, which reveals the surprising change in public opinion. The results were compiled by Facebook user “Statisticder Daily” based on surveys conducted by TEDS after the five presidential elections in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020.
The questionnaire options for the five polls are categorized into peaceful independence, war independence, similar unity and difference unity.
Peaceful independence means “if Taiwan can still maintain peaceful relations with mainland China after declaring independence, then Taiwan should become a new country”; those who support “peaceful independence” were 56.3% in 2004, and have been rising for 16 years. It will have reached 63.4% by 2020.
War for independence means that “even if Taiwan’s declaration of independence causes China to invade Taiwan, Taiwan should still become a new country”. Support for “war independence” rose from 29.8% in 2004 to 44.2% in 2020.
By contrast, support for “similar reunification,” that is, “if the economic, social, and political conditions of mainland China and Taiwan are equal, then the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should be reunified,” has declined over the years, from 40.8% in 2004 to only 44.2% in 2020. 25.6%.
In the past 16 years, the percentage of those who support “unification of differences”, that is, “even though the economic, social and political conditions between mainland China and Taiwan are quite different, the two sides should still be unified”, has remained unchanged at about 10%, showing that there are still about 10% of groups in Taiwan who always support cross-strait reunification.
The DPP has been the ruling party since 2016. The DPP’s President Tsai Ing-wen refuses to recognize the “1992 Consensus,” and the Chinese authorities have taken the recovery of Taiwan as a major cause of reunification, sending military planes and warships frequently to disturb Taiwan this year, causing the atmosphere of war in the Taiwan Strait to rise abruptly.
The Communist Party’s disturbance of Taiwan has also increased Taiwanese people’s antipathy toward the Communist Party. Another earlier poll showed that the percentage of people who consider themselves Taiwanese rather than Chinese is close to 70 percent.
The “Survey on Taiwan’s Elections and Democratization” is an ongoing large-scale research project funded and supported by the Ministry of Humanities and Social Sciences under Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology.
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