Nearly 60% of Taiwan’s residents say China’s threat against Taiwan has increased in the last few years, according to a newly released survey.
The survey, conducted by Taiwan-based Academia Sinica, gauged the island residents’ perception of the United States, along with how they view China’s growing threats to peace and stability.
James Lee, assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, explained the themes of the survey Thursday at a Center for Strategic and International Studies panel discussion.
“The broad themes that the survey addresses are the credibility of the United States and how that has changed over time, the threat of China, and how respondents in Taiwan interpret U.S. and Chinese signals,” Lee said.
Jude Blanchette, Freeman chair in China studies at CSIS and host of Wednesday’s virtual panel discussion, said the survey comes at an important time.
“There’s a growing recognition of Taiwan’s importance both for global supply chains but also for the defense picture in the Indo-Pacific, especially for the United States,” he said.
The annual survey asked 1,236 Taiwanese 37 questions. A key finding of this year’s survey was the difference in how credible Taiwan’s residents view China, versus the U.S.
The report showed an increase of 7.2 percentage points in U.S. credibility, from 34% in 2023 to 41.2% this year.
“Taiwanese perception of U.S. credibility has increased substantially between 2023 and 2024,” Lee said.
Hsin-Hsin Pan, associate professor of psychology at Soochow University, said the survey found much less confidence in China’s credibility.
“An overwhelming percentage of people in Taiwan do not believe that China is credible. Such trend is very consistent and stable for the last four years. Only about 10% of Taiwanese believe that China is credible,” she said at the panel discussion.
The term “credible” is defined as, “living up to one’s words in the original language. In other words, consistency between words and deeds,” Pan added.
The survey questioned respondents on four different U.S. policies toward Taiwan, including presidential commitment, arms sales, air and naval patrol, and international participation to see which had the strongest signal indicating a United States likelihood to defend Taiwan.
Of the four signals, 71.2% of Taiwan residents said air and naval patrols by the United States would increase or significantly increase U.S. credibility — the highest percentage of the four signals surveyed. The others were presidential commitment, 60.3%; arms sales, 62.9%; and international participation, 63.2%.
Currently, the United States is Taiwan’s most important international supporter and arms supplier, but the two sides have no formal diplomatic relations. The U.S., however, is bound by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.
Taiwan has been a self-governing island since 1949. China views Taiwan as its own territory and has increased military pressure on the democratically run island to accept China’s sovereignty claims.
The survey found 80.6% of Taiwan residents believe Taiwan and China do not belong to the same country, while 13.6% said Taiwan and China belong to the same country.
Another important topic to Taiwan’s residents is the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
Pan emphasized the election will have an impact on the direction of U.S.-Taiwan relations.
Taiwan residents were split on the likelihood of the U.S. defending Taiwan if Trump is reelected, compared to the Biden administration.
“With regard to the impact of a second Trump administration, there are mixed views about which direction the overall trend lines in U.S. support for Taiwan will go,” Lee said, “but people do have views, and very few people think that U.S. policy will maintain a broad continuity with U.S. policy under the Biden administration.”
Trump made comments to Bloomberg Business earlier this week about his concern with U.S. military spending on Taiwan and Taiwan’s semiconductor chip industry.
Taiwanese Premier Cho Jung-tai responded Wednesday that the island should pay more for defense, and that Taiwan is willing to “shoulder more responsibility.”
