Taipei, Sept. 1 (CNA) A series of harsh criticism and strong opposition toward Taiwan's planned U.N. referendum from high-ranking U.S. officials recently could stir up even more anti-U.S. sentiment in Taiwan, academics said in a seminar Saturday.
"Recent public opinion polls show that U.S. popularity in Taiwan has been decreasing as it has been leaning toward China in handling the Taiwan Strait issue, " said Lo Chih-cheng, a political professor at Soochow University, in a seminar organized by the pro-independence Taiwan Thinktank.
"The Americans should pay close attention to this, " Lo said, because anti-U.S. sentiment has been almost non-existent during the past decades in Taiwan. If the sentiment develops into anti-Americanism, we will probably see a fundamental and structural change in Taiwan-U.S. relations in the future, he predicted.
East Asian Affairs Senior Director at the U. S. National Security Council Dennis Wilder pointed out Friday that Taiwan's statehood is considered by the U.S. to be an undecided issue. The comment came after U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told a Chinese TV station in an Aug. 29 interview that the U.S. opposes a Taiwan referendum on U.N. membership.
Tung Li-wen, deputy executive of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, agreed that the current intensity of anti-U.S. sentiment is unprecedented, saying that it is because the U.S. is "actually helping China change the status quo and pressuring Taiwan to kowtow to China."
"The worst case scenario would be that Taiwan becomes not only an anti-communist country but also anti-U.S. at the same time, " Tung warned.
Most Taiwanese have the impression that the U.S. has been putting much more pressure on Taiwan rather than asking China to remove its missiles, improve it human rights situation and stop squeezing Taiwan's international space, Lo said.
People have the impression that Taiwan's vibrant and developing democracy, which the U.S. has called for since the end of World War II, has not been helpful in upgrading Taiwan's status in the international community, according to Chen Wen-hsien, a professor at National Chengchi University.