Editor TLN
Nearly 70% reject the claims of former nationalist president Ma Ying-jeou about a common national identity between islanders and mainland Chinese. The idea of ”one China” is also rejected, with different interpretations of what this means. The 2024 presidential elections are uphill for Ma’s Kuomintang.
Taipei () – The majority of the population of Taiwan does not feel “Chinese” and rejects the “1992 Consensus”, an agreement between the nationalists of the Kuomintang (KMT) and communist China that Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou praised during his recent (and controversial) trip to China.
Data from a survey published these days by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation refute Ma’s claim that the people of Taiwan and China are “all Chinese.” 42% of those surveyed disagreed, while 25% explained that they were in some way. Only 7% said they felt Chinese, and 16% said they partially agreed with the position of the former Head of State.
The figures are even more marked with regard to the 1992 Consensus: 67% responded that they disagreed with the concept; those who were in favor stayed at 22.5%. With the agreement of 31 years ago, tacitly reached by the KMT and Beijing, the two parties agreed that Taiwan and China are part of one nation, but each is free to decide what is meant by “China”: according to Taipei it is the Republic of China (official name of Taiwan); for the communist regime it is the People’s Republic of China.
Beijing considers Taiwan a “rogue province” and has never ruled out taking it back by force. The island has been de facto independent from China since 1949; then, Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT took refuge there after losing the civil war on the mainland to the communists, which made it the heir to the Republic of China founded in 1912 by Sun Yat-sen.
The KMT nationalists are now strengthening their relations with Beijing, which, on the contrary, accuses the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, and her Democratic Progressive Party (PDP) of independence claims: the Chinese leaders accuse Tsai precisely of her refusal to recognize the 1992 Consensus.
Several observers say the Chinese want to use the KMT to divide Taiwanese society ahead of the 2024 presidential election, hoping to weaken the PDP. In November, the Tsai party suffered a resounding defeat in local elections. The same happened before the 2020 presidential elections, in which the current head of state was re-elected. In the national vote, the issue of relations with Beijing weighs heavily, and the KMT is often accused of being too attached to the positions of communist China: the latest poll seems to confirm this trend.
