The majority of the public consider it more appropriate for the government to take charge of the negotiations that involve the exercise of government authority
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) announced today the results of a public opinion survey, which showed that with regard to the cross-strait negotiations that involve the exercise of government authority, nearly 60 percent (56.1 percent) of the respondents agreed that the government or its authorized agencies should handle these negotiations. Only around 25 percent of the surveyed was in favor of civic organizations’ involvement. This revealed that the majority of the public still consider it more appropriate for the government to take charge of the negotiations that involve the exercise of government authority, even if cross-strait civic exchanges have become frequent.
With regard to the cross-strait status and the future of Taiwan, the public opinion survey also showed that 76.6 percent of the respondents agreed that “Taiwan is an independent sovereign country.” With regard to Taiwan’s future, 84.3 percent of the public was in favor of “letting the people of Taiwan decide their own future.” Only 7.5 percent believed that “Taiwan’s future must be collectively decided by the people of Taiwan and China.”
This public opinion survey regularly conducted by the MAC also showed that with regard to the huge amount of investments made by Taiwanese businessmen in China, 54.0 percent of the public believed that it bears a “negative impact” on Taiwan’s economic development; 54.6 percent of the respondents believed that the government should impose “stricter” measures on Taiwanese businessmen’s China-bound investments. As for the issue on the cross-strait direct transportation links, 76.2 percent of the respondents believed that these links must be permitted “under certain conditions.” Only 12.6 percent believed that direct links must be permitted “without any conditions.” These results are more or less consistent with the results of previous surveys.
The results of the survey also indicated that if developing diplomatic relations with other countries will cause tension in cross-strait relations, 63.5 percent of the respondents still believed in the continuation of developing diplomatic relations. As for the people’s views on independence versus reunification, the results were also consistent with the trend in previous surveys: the majority of respondents (accounting for 88.6 percent) still advocated for the maintenance of the broadly defined status quo. With regard to China’s proposal of developing cross-strait relations under the so-called “one country, two systems” formula, the majority of people (75.4 percent) expressed their disapproval, which conforms to the trend in previous MAC surveys.
The MAC commissioned the Election Study Center of the National Chengchi University to conduct telephone survey of Taiwanese adults over the age of 20 in Taiwan from March 31 to April 2, 2006. A total of 1,088 valid samples were collected, with 95 confidence interval and the sampling error is approximately 2.97 percent.