TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The proportion of Taiwanese believing that the United States will come to aid the country if it faces an attack by China has increased by 8% from last year, a poll showed Tuesday (Feb. 21).
In a similar poll conducted a year ago, the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation (TPOF) found 34.5% of respondents believed the U.S. would intervene, with 55.9% holding the opposite view.
However, by Feb. 2023, the proportion of respondents expecting the U.S. to help out had surged by 8.3% to 42.8%, while those not believing in American military action declined by 9.4% to 46.5%, CNA reported.
The TPOF poll indicated that 51.6% of the Taiwanese public feared that Taiwan would become a second Ukraine, down from 59.7% a year before, with 43.6% not worried by the possibility, up from 37.5%.
The survey also asked how much faith the public held in Taiwan’s own military should China attack tomorrow. The replies were almost evenly divided, with 45.3% professing faith, and 47.2% holding little trust in Taiwan’s armed forces. The poll found a wide divergence according to political party, with 72% of supporters of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government expressing faith in the military, but 73% of opposition Kuomintang (KMT) backers holding the opposite view.
Turning to the recent controversy about Chinese spy balloons spotted in the U.S. and in Taiwan, 66.3% approved of the military shooting down Chinese balloons, while 19.2% objected.
The TPOF conducted the survey Feb. 12-13, obtaining 1,072 valid results with a margin of error of 2.99%.
