Sunday, January 22, 2006

Lookers-on see most of the game

Recently Taiwan's goverment commissioned Gallup Poll to carry out a survey of the recognition of sovereign status of Taiwan among the foreigners. The selected countries are United States, United Kingdoms, Japan, Germany and France. ( see the story on Taipei Times here.)

The survey found 75% to 81% of the respondents consider Taiwan and China are two different countries. Also 6 out of 10 surveyed opinion leaders of the objective countries hold the same view. For sure the result is very different from what China has been proclaiming that Taiwan is part of the Chinese territory.

It's also quite noticeable that most of the foreigners oppose China's military actions toward Taiwan and support diplomatic or military interference from their own countries.

It says lookers-on see most of the game. Some Taiwanese would rather hold a vague or timid stand of the sovereign status of their own motherland. I would say the reason is my countrymen do not have an international vision that thanks to the biased media in Taiwan. Among the main stream media, the result of the survey were almost neglected intentionally or unintentionally. God knows !