Support for Taiwan's immediate independence increases by more than 25%

... in just five months!

UPDATE 2a: The title and subheadline of this post [originally: "Support for Taiwan's immediate independence nearly triples ...in just six months!" -- based on a comparison with the MAC survey quoted below] has been changed to reflect a better comparison with a survey done by the same pollster the month after the MAC poll. Details from that poll and a link to the original are included below in "Update 2b." [/update 2a]

An article from Now News shows that a poll released today by the deep-blue Global Views Magazine (遠見雜誌) has some very interesting numbers related to the desire for Taiwan's formal independence:

民調顯示，19.0%民眾贊成台灣應該儘快獨立、10.3%認應先維持現狀再獨立（急獨與緩獨合計29.3%），40.7%先維持現狀再看情形、 11.0%永遠維持現狀（維持現狀合計為51.7%），4.3%先維持現狀再和大陸統一、4.0%台灣應該儘快和大陸統一（緩統與急統合計為8.3%），與馬總統執政以後，民眾贊成統一的比率並無變動。

[Tim Maddog translation:]
The survey says that 19.0% support independence as soon as possible. 10.3% want to preserve the status quo for now but declare independence later. (Supporters of immediate independence and delayed independence amount to 29.3%.) 40.7% want to preserve the status quo and decide later, while 11% want to preserve the status quo indefinitely (totaling 51.7% in favor of preserving the status quo [sic]). 4.3% want to preserve the status quo but unify with the mainland [sic] later. 4.0% of Taiwanese want to unify with the mainland [sic] as soon as possible. (Those in favor of unification add up to 8.3%.) After President Ma took office, there has been no change in support for unification.

UPDATE 1: Here's a direct link to the latest Global Views survey [464 KB PDF file]. [/update 1]

UPDATE 3: Here's the English version of the Global Views survey [152 KB PDF file]. [/update 3]

Just six month's ago, Taiwan's so-called Mainland Affairs Council (大陸委員會) did a survey which said that "6.7%" supported independence as soon as possible [12 KB PDF file].


A Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) survey from April 17 to 20, 2009
in which only 8.8% state a desire for Taiwan's unification with China.
UPDATE 2b: A May 13 - 15, 2009 survey from Global Views [744 KB PDF file] says:

[...] 15.0%贊成儘速獨立 [...]

[Tim Maddog translation:]
[...] 15% support immediate independence [...]

The current figure of 19% support for immediate independence would therefore amount to an increase of 26.66% (a four percentage point increase from the earlier 15%). The total support for unification in the May 2009 poll amounted to 8.3% -- precisely the same as the most recent poll. [/update 2b]

China's Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) -- chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait -- is coming to Taiwan for talks (and possibly to sign agreements) with Straits [sic] Exchange Foundation (海峽交流基金會) chairman and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice-chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) this December. Will you be out there protesting?

You are not in the minority. You'd better let the world hear your voices!

---

Nodes: Taiwan, 台灣, China, 中國, Taiwan Independence, 台灣獨立, survey, 民調, Chiang Pin-kung, 江丙坤, P.K. Chiang, Chen Yunlin, 陳雲林

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

A feast of KMT myths

This post should have appeared a few weeks back before the rally but somehow never got published. I've changed a few tenses and made a few minor revisions. This rally was one of the developments Wang Chin-pyng was respnding to ]weh he said that the KMT was dominated by a minority (mainlander) elite.

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is held a "Love Taiwan/Defend the Republic of China" rally tomorrow near CKS Memorial Hall. The press conference was a litany of KMT canards.

Acting Chairman Chiang Pin-kung invited KMT supporters to come out and "express blue anger." He went on to say that "under presidents Chiang Kai-shek and Chinag Ching-kuo, Taiwan enjoyed an era of happiness, prosperity, and beauty. We cannot allow the DPP to erase history." Note the conservative appeal to a happy past totally unrelated to the dictatorial rule of the Chiang family when few were allowed to leave the island and political dissidents were arrested or shot by the tens of thousands. Happy, prosperous, and beautiful indeed!

Behind Chiang at the press conference were posters that read "We've been Pissed Off for a Long Time. Come Out and Show Your Anger!" Print ads for the rally in the China Times today said that "Look at how the DPP can do nothing but change names and ignores the people. Nothing but slogans. The DPP doesn't know how to govern. If you don't want to see them go on acting up, come out and let them hear you roar!"

As with Chiang's comments, note the tone of resentful, petulant anger. KMT supporters are pissed off (bushuang), showing anger (qiangsheng), and roaring (nuhou). If you go out to the rally tomorrow you will see ample evidence of this sullen resentfulness.

Oddly enough, this tone is always filtered out in international media reports about Taiwan. But the other message in the print ad comes out loud and clear--the DPP is allegedly misgoverning Taiwan. The filtered-out resentment is then transposed to the entire Taiwanese people (as opposed to one conservative, resentful constituency) and represented as being the causal effect of the other message of poor DPP governance. The end result of this alchemy? The Taiwanese people are sick of DPP misrule and the rational, pragmatic KMT will right things by getting back to business.

Chiang expanded on his theme. The purpose of government, according to Chiang, is to allow the people to live in peace and pursue their private business or careers (anju leye). But what these libertarian-sounding sentiments really mean is that we should go back to the low-crime days of martial law and allow big business free rein to blow the savings of the Taiwanese people on high-risk investments in China.

The means to achieving these ignoble ends are peace with China, ethnic harmony, bi-partisan cooperation, and getting tough on crime. What a hoot!

Peace with China means making deals over Taiwan's sovereignty and future status with consulting the Taiwanese people, cozying up to China, and intentionally eroding Taiwan's defenses. Ethnic harmony means getting back to the good old days when those uppity Taiwanese knew their place.

Bi-partisan cooperation is especially rich coming from a party that has been willing to leave Taiwan without a budget unless it gets control over the Central Elections Commission.

The rally will march around the walls of CKS memorial in a ludicrous reprise of Shih Ming-teh's Naztec line marches last fall (what ever happened to Shih, btw?) followed by film clips of Chinag Kai-shek's statue in Kaohsiung being 'desecrated' and images of Taiwan from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

Chiang said that those were Taiwan's salad days, when Taiwan's economy was taking off. In those days everyone was full of hope. Now everyone wants to find a way for Taiwan's economy to take off again.

The linkage between an imagined past and a new era of unlimited economic development is striking. The poverty and indeed regressive nature of the KMT's vision of Taiwan 's future is underlined in Chiang's next comments. Over the past seven years, Taiwan's GDP has grown by an average of "just" 3.5 percent a year. Meanwhile, where Taiwanese per capita income once led the hated Koreans by US$5,000, Taiwanese per capita incomes are now the lowest among the four East Asian dragon and US$2,000 behind the Koreans. The KMT's economic policies left the Taiwanese "standing up to their eyeballs in cash."

I'll leave it to the experts to debate Taiwan's economic history, but it should be noted that it is an open question whether the KMT state-directed economy drove Taiwan's economy or inhibited the entrepreneurial drive of the Taiwanese people. Taiwan's economic miracle also came at a horrible cost to Taiwan's now ravaged environment and to exploited workers in the sweatshops of yore. Of course, things were pretty good for Taiwan's massive and cosseted state sector who lived inside a magical circle of cradle-to-grave benefits including lifelong job security, pensions, and free education and health care unlike the unwashed masses who pretty much fended for themselves.