Taiwanese mean business, while Chinese see family

The survey on cross-strait perceptions was conducted by Global Views Monthly (GV) as part of its 2020 year report. The aim of the report is to gauge how Taiwan can best take advantage of the rise of China, with its authors predicting that China will overtake the U.S. to become the world's largest economy by 2020.

When asked how they perceived their cross-strait counterparts, 53.6% of Taiwanese viewed the Chinese as business partners and 13.3% as friends. On the other hand, 52.3% of Chinese saw the Taiwanese as family, while a mere 16.2% saw them as only business partners.

This difference spilled into the unification and independence debate, with 60% of Taiwanese rooting for the status quo, 16.1% wanting to move towards reunification, and 8.9% pressing for independence. Amongst the Chinese, 64.2% supported reunification, 26.7% preferred the status quo, and 5.1% for independence.

Perceptions of the other side's political leader were also widely divergent, with 44.2% of Taiwanese saying they had no good feelings towards Chinese president Hu Jintao, while 30.4% said they did. The number of those negative towards Hu increases to over fifty percent among those aged below fourty. 70.1% of Chinese on the other hand, expressed positive feelings for President Ma Ying-jeou, with virtually the same result carrying across all age segments. GV attributed this to Ma's China-friendly policies.

Similarly, when asked whether interested in buying the other side's products, over half of Taiwanese said they had no interest in Chinese products, while only 0.1% of Chinese said the same of Taiwanese products.

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