Written by Staff Writer
With tensions back in the headlines, it’s interesting to look at a country that’s not associated with clashes in the south — in this case, Taiwan.
A 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center found the share of Taiwanese who identify as opposition to the Chinese government has dropped to the lowest level in history.
In the survey, 70% of Taiwanese responded “never” or “yes” to the question of “What is your opinion of the Chinese government?”
Last weekend, in a marked escalation of the Taiwan Strait’s stand-off between Beijing and Taipei, police forcibly dismantled barricades around the city’s legislature — the so-called “Mainland Affairs Council” — and arrested the group of pro-independence politicians it was protecting.
What was the response from the rest of the world? In this CNN Business Dispatches video, the debonaire Carlos Muñoz Pastor of the European Council on Foreign Relations says the international community’s response to the incident in Taiwan is especially vital given China’s expansionist activities in the South China Sea.