Poll boost for Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen after tough stand against Beijing

Public support for Taiwan’s embattled President Tsai Ing-wen has risen sharply after her tough rejection of Beijing’s call for unification talks, boosting her chances of winning her party’s nomination for the 2020 elections.

Tsai, whose popularity had been flagging at a low of 24 per cent due to widespread disapproval of her performance, has seen her approval rating climb by 10 percentage points to 34.5 per cent in the latest opinion poll by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation.

Michael You Ying-lung, foundation chairman and a hardline supporter of independence for the self-ruled island, said the turnaround in Tsai’s popularity showed there was no market in Taiwan for “one country, two systems”, the model for unification proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the beginning of January.

“The president’s popularity stayed at 24.3 per cent last month, but jumped sharply to 34.5 per cent – the highest in six months – because of her rebuke of Xi’s speech and her pledge to safeguard Taiwan and the public well-being,” You said on Monday, releasing the poll results.

You, a member of the hardline faction in Tsai’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, has strongly opposed Tsai’s intention to run for a second term but said the rise in her popularity showed a majority of the public were convinced by her response to Xi’s January 2 speech, delivered on the 40th anniversary of the cross-strait ceasefire.