After the Russian-Ukrainian conflict broke out, the United States insisted on not trooping out to assist Ukraine from beginning to end, which made Taiwanese who “watched the fire from the other side” increasingly disbelieve that the U.S. military would send troops to aid when the People’s Liberation Army took action.
According to a report by Taiwan’s Zhongshi Electronic News on the 15th, a poll released by the Taiwan Institute of International Strategy and the Taiwan Institute of International Studies on the same day showed that 42.7% of Taiwanese people believe that “the United States will send troops to Taiwan when there is a war between the two sides of the strait”. Assist”, but 47.3% thought “no”.
According to the Taiwan Strait Security Poll published by the Taiwan Institute of International Strategy in October 2020, more than half (55.1%) of the public believed that “the United States will send troops to assist Taiwan”. Before the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, a poll published by Taiwan’s “Tianxia” magazine in January also showed that nearly 60% (58.8%) of the respondents believed that the US government might send troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a war between the two sides. The analysis believes that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has obviously changed the thinking of Taiwanese, that is, most Taiwanese no longer believe that the US military will help defend Taiwan.
As for the ways in which the United States might assist Taiwan, in a poll conducted by the Taiwan Institute for International Strategy on the 15th, the highest proportion of Americans believed that the United States would “provide weapons and equipment”, reaching 61.5%, followed by “public solidarity” (48.5%) and “intelligence”. Support” (44.1%), and the lowest proportion is “support by sending troops” (26.1%).
Wang Kunyi, chairman of the Taiwan Institute of International Strategy, analyzed that the number of Taiwanese people who believed that the United States would send troops to assist dropped by more than ten percent because the United States insisted on not trooping out before and after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. “Taiwanese see this kind of rhetoric,” he said.
Polls also show that when the United States does not support Taiwan, 56.2% of the people believe that Taiwan is not capable of resisting the mainland’s military action alone. As for the future development of cross-strait relations, 77.3% of the people believe that peaceful exchanges should be maintained, and only 16.1% believe that they should “resist China’s protection of Taiwan”. Wang Kunyi said that even if the authorities are irrational, the people are rational. If the cross-strait war is because Taiwan first declared “Taiwan independence”, the vast majority of Taiwanese will not support it.