The Multiverse of Taiwan’s Future: Reconsidering the Independence–Unification (Tondu) Attitudes

Abstract

For decades, scholars have constructed various ways to measure Taiwanese public opinion on the nation’s future, the independence–unification ( Tondu) question. While existing surveys find that Taiwanese people become more likely to support independence, the majority still favors the “status quo” option. Existing measurements have a number of weaknesses. For instance, most do not inform citizens what the “status quo” means, nor do they specify when and how independence and unification will manifest in reality. We propose a new approach to measuring citizens’ preferences of the nation’s future by specifying five mutually exclusive options on the independence–unification spectrum and field a nationwide survey to illustrate the validity of the new typology. Compared with traditional measurements, our method has more substantial explanatory power for several key political issues in Taiwan.