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Updated Wednesday, July 15, 2009 9:41 am TWN, CNA

China tops list of unfriendly countries despite improved relations: survey

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Despite improved relations between Taiwan and China over the past year, China has remained at the top of a list of countries that people of the younger generation believe are unfriendly toward Taiwan, according to the results of a survey released yesterday by an education foundation.

According to the survey conducted in June on the global views of senior high school and university students, when asked to identify countries that are unfriendly toward Taiwan, 82.9 percent of the respondents mentioned China.

Second on the list was South Korea, which was named by 33.3 percent of respondents.

Among the countries viewed as friendly toward Taiwan, Japan was at the top the list, picked by 44. 4 percent of the respondents.

While 41.6 percent of the students think the United States is friendly toward Taiwan, 29.7 percent believe it is unfriendly, the poll found.

The United States, China and Japan were singled out as the three countries that are most important to Taiwan's economic and trade development, named by 84 percent, 78.7 percent and 75.7 percent of respondents, respectively.

Sixty-eight percent of respondents think it is important to enhance their English language proficiency, and 60.8 percent said having global views will help boost their competitiveness internationally, according to the survey.

Although 22 percent of students said they pay attention to international current affairs every day, most said that they focus on a single field, such as sports or show business.

Most of the students agreed that having access to global information, upgrading foreign language skills and understanding international etiquette are essential to the development of global views.

However, they said that inability to communicate in foreign languages, lack of understanding of foreign countries and lack of experience in hosting foreign guests contribute the most to difficulties in dealing with foreigners.

The survey was conducted among 1,738 students in seven urbanized areas around Taiwan and had a margin of error of 3 percent.

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