Analysis: How Does Taiwan's Public View the U.S. Presidential Election?
Taiwan, one of the only places in Asia to favor a Trump reelection in 2020, may be changing its mind on the Republican nominee this time around. That's according to a new survey by the U.S.-based Brookings Institution.
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00:00So you've been doing some research about the upcoming U.S. elections, Democrats versus
00:04Republicans.
00:05Who does Taiwan prefer?
00:08So in 2020, there was a narrative that really sort of dominated the foreign policy world
00:13that came from this YouGov poll that was conducted that showed that Taiwan was one of the only
00:18places in the world that preferred Trump in a Republican administration to Biden in a
00:22Democratic administration.
00:24And so, you know, four years later, we've had four years of Biden, of Democratic administrations.
00:31And we wanted to ask whether or not people in Taiwan still feel the same way.
00:36And what we found was really counterintuitive to what most narratives about Taiwan would
00:41say.
00:42Rather than seeing overt support for Trump and Republicans, we actually find more support
00:48for Biden and Democrats across all sorts of questions and categories.
00:54And what are the factors at play here that make Taiwanese people feel differently towards
00:59different political parties, different political leaders?
01:02I think there is often this perception, especially before the Biden administration, that Democrats
01:08are weak on Taiwan or that they don't care about Taiwan or that Republicans are overtly
01:12more supportive of Taiwan.
01:14Now, of course, if you look at American voting records, you see that to be empirically not
01:18true that Democrats and Republicans vote unanimously across partisan lines in support
01:24of Taiwan.
01:25But ever since the Biden administration has come into office, I really think it's been
01:30a moment of learning for people in Taiwan to see that you can still have an incredibly
01:35solid U.S.-Taiwan relationship, regardless of who the president of the United States
01:39is.
01:40And whether it's been, say, Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan or the sheer number of bills
01:45in support of Taiwan that have passed under the Biden administration, I think this combined
01:50with the increasing number of scepticism towards Trump, especially given his recent comments
01:56on how Taiwan ought to be paying the United States more for protection.
02:00Can you tell us how attitudes in Taiwan are changing towards the U.S. when it comes to
02:05trusting that the U.S. has Taiwan's back?
02:08Yeah, so this is a bit of an enigma for a lot of us who study Taiwanese public opinion
02:15is on one hand, we see more and more people in Taiwan confident that the United States
02:20would help support Taiwan in the event of a conflict with the PRC.
02:24At the same time, we see polling numbers that show across different polls that the United
02:29States is not seen as a trustworthy ally by people in Taiwan.
02:34It's something that my survey data has found, and it's something that other Taiwanese survey
02:38researchers have also found.
02:40So what this tells us is that on one hand, people here are confident that the United
02:43States would help Taiwan in the event of a conflict, but that the United States itself
02:48may not necessarily be a trustworthy ally.
02:51Even though these two things may seem contradictory, I think given Taiwan's very contentious geopolitical
02:57position, I think this is really just Taiwanese respondents trying to rationalize and make
03:02sense of their position in the world and the complexities behind allying with the United
03:06States.