Taiwanese Support for Self-Defense Is High but Conditional
Wen-Chin Wu, in a Hoover Institution talk drawing on multiple public-opinion surveys, argues that Taiwanese support for self-defense is high but conditional. He separates backing for national defense measures, including U.S. arms purchases, from personal willingness to fight or resist, and finds that both depend heavily on perceived threat from China, expectations of U.S. intervention, party identity, costs, and question wording. The result, in Wu’s account, is not a Taiwan that is either complacent or uniformly resolved, but a public that is “worried but cool” amid coercion and strategic ambiguity.
Hoover Institution·May 27, 2026·18 min read
