Friends with limitations: Central European public attitudes towards Taiwan in 2025

Executive summary

Introduction

As US traditional alliances and partnerships face upheaval under the second Trump presidency, both the EU and Taiwan are left to deal with the fallout, with implications for their national security and international standing. Fears of aggression from Russia and China, coupled with uncertainty over US defense commitments (explicit and implicit), are drawing Europe and Taiwan closer together. The security of the Indo-Pacific is increasingly interconnected, making Taiwan’s future crucial for Europe as well. 

At the same time, as the EU looks to diversify its economic partnerships to offset troubled Transatlantic relations, voices advocating for closer ties with China risk sidelining EU-Taiwan relations, which have undergone rapid development over the past five years. 

Yet, Taiwan carries considerable economic importance for Europe. It has become a key node in several critical supply chains, such as semiconductors and emerging green technologies. In response, the EU has sought deeper cooperation with Taiwan in these areas, advancing frameworks such as the European Chips Act. Taiwan has, in recent years, also intensified its diplomatic efforts across Europe, especially at the parliamentary and sub-national levels, as it tries to expand its international space increasingly curtailed by China. 

Leading this engagement are the Visegrad Four (V4) countries. Czechia, Poland, and (until 2023) Slovakia—alongside Lithuania, a non-Visegrad state—have been recognized as “vanguards” in actively seeking to strengthen their economic and political ties with Taiwan. Hungary, by contrast, has taken a more pragmatic approach, focusing on economic cooperation while avoiding political topics, reflecting its close relationship with Beijing. 

Slovakia is a noteworthy case in and of itself. Under the center-right coalition from 2020 to 2023, it was among the EU’s most active supporters of Taiwan. However, since the 2023 snap elections and the emergence of the nationalist-populist cabinet led by Prime Minister Robert Fico, Slovakia has pursued an “all-azimuth” foreign policy, placing greater focus on engagement with China,  leaving ties with Taiwan to stagnate if not regress. This underscores the outsized impact of domestic political change on relations with Taiwan. 

Against this backdrop, and given the influence of public opinion on foreign policy, it is essential to understand how citizens perceive Taiwan and what preferences they hold regarding relations with it. With Czechia heading into parliamentary elections in autumn 2025, these perceptions take on added relevance.

Drawing on data from a large-scale public opinion survey conducted by CEIAS in early 2025, this report provides a snapshot of attitudes in the V4 towards Taiwan. It identifies the political and demographic divides along which these attitudes differ and compares the findings with a previous survey conducted in 2020 to assess how views have evolved over the past few years.

Central European attitudes toward Taiwan

Views toward Taiwan are relatively positive across the V4. In all four countries, more respondents expressed favorable or very favorable attitudes towards Taiwan than unfavorable or very unfavorable ones. The share of respondents expressing favorable or very favorable attitudes was significantly higher in Czechia (40%) and Poland (44%) than in Hungary (34%) and Slovakia (36%). 

It is also notable that, in all four countries, over one-third of respondents adopted a neutral view, suggesting that a significant percentage of the population does not have a firm opinion.

Views toward Taiwan have improved significantly in all V4 countries since the previous 2020 survey. Back then, respondents felt, on balance, positive toward Taiwan in Czechia and Poland but negative toward Taiwan in Hungary and Slovakia.

Notably, Taiwan’s net favorability—the difference between the aggregate value of “negative” and “very negative” and the aggregate value of “positive” and “very positive”—increased most significantly in Slovakia, jumping by 18 percentage points compared to 2020. In comparison, it increased by 12 points in Poland, 10 in Hungary, and eight in Czechia. These changes may be indicative of trends in the V4 countries’ bilateral relationship with Taiwan. However, it is important not to prematurely attribute them to the success of Taiwan’s diplomatic outreach. Indeed, respondents are likely to consider the broader geopolitical context, which has changed significantly since 2020, when answering survey questions about Taiwan.

Attitudes towards Taiwan are significantly more positive than those towards China. This is the case across all V4 countries, although the share of respondents expressing positive or very positive views toward China was much higher in Slovakia (34%), Hungary (31%), and Poland (30%) than in Czechia (21%). 

Factors influencing the perception of Taiwan

Regression analysis of key demographic and ideological variables, based on an aggregated sample from the V4 countries, shows that several factors have a statistically significant effect on the degree to which the V4 public is favorable toward Taiwan. Notably, women are significantly more likely to express positive views of Taiwan than men. Education is another factor with a strong effect; more educated individuals are more favorable toward Taiwan than those possessing lower educational attainment.  Significant effects were also observed for the urban-rural divide, with urban populations having somewhat more positive views of Taiwan, as well as on the ideological divide: on the left-right axis, right-aligned respondents are more positive, and on the liberal-conservative axis, liberals are more positive. 

The effects of some variables depend on the country, as shown by further analysis of the dataset on an individual country level. In Poland, for instance, education did not record a statistically significant effect. In Slovakia and Hungary, neither the urban-rural divide nor the left-right divide was a significant predictor of perceptions of Taiwan. 

This shows that the V4 region is not homogeneous. Taiwan needs to recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach to public diplomacy in the region will probably not yield uniformly positive results across the four countries. A more nuanced approach, tailored to each country, will be needed to make more significant favorability gains down the line.

As the regression analysis suggests, views of Taiwan differ based on the political ideologies of the respondents, though the effects of this divide are not always consistent or equally strong in individual countries. 

Although liberal respondents express more positive views of Taiwan than conservatives in all four countries, the picture grows a bit more complex when taking into account the left-right political divide. In Czechia and Slovakia, respondents leaning to the political right are more positive on Taiwan than left-leaning respondents. The picture is reversed in the case of Poland and Hungary, even though the differences between the two camps are not big. Across the board, centrist respondents (both on the liberal-conservative and the left-right axes) show the largest share of neutral views.

Consequently, there are also interesting differences in attitudes along party lines. While perceptions of the electorate do not necessarily translate directly into the parties’ policies, they offer a helpful perspective on how political divisions interplay with perceptions of Taiwan, and at the same time can serve as somewhat of a predictor of how different political parties might position themselves vis-à-vis Taiwan.

Czechia is polarized in its views of Taiwan. Supporters of the current governing coalition—composed of ODS, TOP09, and STAN (and previously Piráti)—show an overall favorable view of Taiwan. Between 55% and 63% of supporters of these parties hold favorable views of Taiwan. Supporters of opposition parties take a dimmer view of Taiwan. Respondents who said they would vote for the populist ANO party of former PM Andrej Babiš (2017-2021)—the leading opposition party and the clear frontrunner in the upcoming parliamentary elections in October 2025—hold slightly more negative (35%) than positive (31%) views of Taiwan. ANO supporters also have the highest share of negative opinions of Taiwan compared to supporters of other Czech parties. On the other hand, a larger share of ANO supporters hold positive views of Taiwan than backers of far-right SPD (26% positive) and far left Stačilo! (Enough!), a coalition led by the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (15%). Coincidentally, Stačilo! is the only Czech political subject whose supporters hold more positive than negative views of China. 

This suggests that the upcoming Czech elections, which ANO is likely to win, may lead to a change in Prague’s currently vocal pro-Taiwan foreign policy, possibly towards one that is more focused on pragmatic economic relations with both Taiwan and China. However, due to broad China-critical sentiment across the political spectrum, a post-election government is unlikely to shift to an outright pro-China stance, unlike what happened in Slovakia after the 2023 elections.

Hungarian supporters of the two main political forces—the ruling Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the opposition Tisza Párt led by Fidesz-defector Péter Magyar—exhibit very similar views of Taiwan: 28% of Fidesz voters and 27% of Tisza supporters claim a negative perception of Taiwan, while 36% of Fidesz voters and 39% of the Tisza voters have positive views. 

Interestingly, views of China were much more polarized between the voters of Fidesz and Tisza. This is noteworthy given Fidesz’s pro-China foreign policy, although it has maintained active and economically pragmatic relations with Taiwan. Negative opinions of Taiwan are high among the supporters of the far-right Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland): 38% had negative views and 29% positive views.

In Poland, attitudes about Taiwan are relatively homogeneous across party lines. Positive views prevail over negative ones among voters of all the major political factions. The most positive views (51%) were from voters of Lewica (The Left), a catch-all coalition of the Polish left. Supporters of Koalicja Obywatelska (Civic Coalition), the party of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, also express strong pro-Taiwan views (49% positive against 18% negative). 

Interestingly, predominantly positive views (49%) were expressed by the supporters of the far-right Konfederacja (Confederation), whose representatives are known for their outright xenophobic positions. Respondents affiliated with the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) party are somewhat of an outlier, recording the lowest share of positive views (45%) and the highest share of negative opinions (28%). 

Slovak voters show divergent views of Taiwan, albeit to a lesser extent than in Czechia. During the 2020-2023 election cycle, Slovakia, when led by a center-right government, was among the most active supporters of Taiwan. This has changed since the 2023 elections, which ushered in a China-friendly government led by the four-time Prime Minister Robert Fico. The political divide is also largely mirrored in the views of the electorates of individual political parties. Among the government coalition parties of SMER-SD and HLAS (SNS was omitted due to a small sample size), there was a relatively high share of negative perceptions of Taiwan (33% and 31%, respectively). However, HLAS supporters are slightly more positive (33%) than negative in their outlook on Taiwan. In the case of SMER-SD voters, only 26% hold favorable opinions of Taiwan. A similar situation, where the negative share of views is somewhat larger than the share of positive perception, occurs for supporters of the populist Sme rodina (We Are Family) and the far-right Republika.

Slovakia’s so-called democratic opposition has a far more positive perception of Taiwan. Among supporters of Demokrati (Democrats), Progresívne Slovensko (Progressive Slovakia), Sloboda a solidarita (Freedom and Solidarity), and Slovensko (Slovakia, formerly OĽANO), positive views range between 47% and 50%. Interestingly, voters of KDH (Christian Democrats), which is one of the most China-critical parties and the only one to be represented in the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), show less enthusiasm about Taiwan, although positive views (36%) still outmatch negative perceptions (24%).

Respondents’ self-identification with the global “West” or “East” is clearly linked to their thoughts about Taiwan. Across the region, those who identify as members of the “West” have significantly more positive perceptions of Taiwan than those who identify as part of the “East” or those who are in-between the two. This effect is strongest in Czechia, only slightly weaker in Poland and Slovakia, and least pronounced in Hungary. 

In contrast, among those who identify with the “East”, the picture is more complicated. In Hungary and Poland, the share of East-identifying respondents with positive views of Taiwan is similar to that of West-identifying respondents, although the share of negative views is larger among the former group. In both countries, the net perception of Taiwan is still positive among the East-identifying group. A different picture emerges in Czechia and Slovakia, where the East-identifying respondents have a predominantly negative view of Taiwan. 

Among those who see themselves in the space in between the West and the East, neutral views of Taiwan prevail (around 50% in each country), with negative views being slightly more prevalent than the positive ones, except for Poland.

China’s claims on Taiwan

Respondents tend to disagree with the notion that Taiwan is an inseparable part of the People’s Republic of China, as claimed by Beijing’s One China Principle. The percentage of those who at least somewhat agreed with this idea was low: 16% in Czechia, 18% in Hungary, 17% in Poland, and 22% in Slovakia. 

At the same time, only a negligible share of the population (under 5%) in each country has a positive view of China’s policy towards Taiwan, while the share of respondents who view China’s policy negatively (43-58%) is even higher than the share of people who disagree with China’s outright claim over Taiwan (30-45%). This implies that, even if respondents do not necessarily have a clear opinion on Taiwan’s sovereignty, they do not have a favorable view of China’s policy towards Taiwan.

However, it must be noted that the neutral answer category is the most common across all V4 countries for both questions. Between 40% and 53% of respondents neither agreed nor disagreed with the two statements posed to them. This shows that many citizens do not have a strong opinion or understanding of these issues, meaning Taiwan still has a large segment of the population to win over, a segment that could also be targeted by Chinese foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) operations to achieve the opposite effect.

Bilateral relations with Taiwan

Most citizens across the V4 are supportive of conducting relations with Taiwan and do not want to limit cooperation in order to preserve relations with China. The percentage of those who at least somewhat agreed with limiting cooperation with Taiwan was low: 16% in Czechia, 18% in Hungary, 17% in Poland, and 22% in Slovakia. Support for engaging with Taiwan was the highest in Czechia (44%) and Poland (41%), compared to Hungary (32%) and Slovakia (30%). However, even in the case of Hungary and Slovakia, this is still a higher share than support for limiting cooperation with Taiwan. Nevertheless, larger shares of the population (except in Czechia) express neutrality over this question, indicating that large segments of the population don’t find this issue of high importance to them, or simply are not informed enough to form an opinion.

Still, it is noteworthy that, on average, the share of people who expect China to retaliate against cooperation with Taiwan is somewhat higher than the share who would agree to limiting ties with Taiwan in order to avoid damaging economic interests with China. This suggests that even if people think the threat of Chinese retaliation or coercion is real, a sizeable portion of them deem this risk acceptable and nevertheless support more cooperation with Taiwan.

When it comes to Beijing’s often-asserted claim that Central European countries engage with Taiwan only because they follow the US lead, significant shares of the population in Czechia (49%), Slovakia (38%), and Poland (32%) reject this claim. The largest shares of respondents in Poland and Slovakia neither agree nor disagree with the claim. 

This question was not asked of the respondents in Hungary, due to the virtually non-existent political relationship between Hungary and Taiwan, making the question largely irrelevant. Instead, Hungarian respondents were asked: “If Hungary were to develop its relations with Taiwan, it would primarily be due to American pressure, not in line with Hungarian interests.” Only 20% disagreed, while 33% thought this would be the case.

Asking respondents to evaluate past political visits to Taiwan offers a glimpse at how they see the risks and benefits of these types of interactions in hindsight. Asking this question has been the most salient in Czechia, where two delegations led by high-ranking parliamentarians—Senate President Miloš Vystrčil in 2020 and Chamber of Deputies Speaker Markéta Pekarová Adamová in 2023—garnered significant public attention. Vystrčil’s trip was a watershed moment for Taiwan-Central Europe engagement, after which more frequent and visible political visits to Taiwan have become rather normalized.

Looking back at these trips, 29% of Czech respondents disagree with the visits, 33% neither agree nor disagree, and 38% agree that making the trips was the right move. Still, these figures need to be caveated: broader political support or animosity towards the two political leaders, or their parties, could be an intervening factor here.

Aiding Taiwan in case of conflict with China

In the event of a conflict between China and Taiwan, few Central Europeans would be supportive of their country assisting Taiwan militarily or with economic aid. However, significant differences in opinion are found between countries. 

Czechia is the only country showing net positive support for direct economic assistance to Taiwan (+5%), with the largest overall share of respondents in favor (38%). In Slovakia (-2%) and Poland (-9%), we see a slightly negative net support, while in Hungary, we see the least support for economic aid to Taiwan (-32%). 

The public in all four countries does not support military help via NATO to Taiwan in case of China’s attack: net support for this was  -12% in Poland, -20% in Czechia, -22% in Hungary, and -34% in Slovakia. Slovakia also shows the highest overall share of respondents not favoring military help: 49% are against this. 

Still, in both cases, we see a large share of unconvinced people (29-41%), providing space for Taiwan’s public diplomacy to achieve a higher share of support for aiding Taiwan.

In contrast, support for enacting sanctions against China at the EU level in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan was relatively high: 49% of respondents in Czechia, 41% in Hungary, 52% in Poland, and 41% in Slovakia at least somewhat agreed with doing so. Support for this policy was the strongest among respondents who identify themselves as part of the global West.

This suggests that, in the case of a conflict with China, citizens across the V4 are open to siding with Taiwan. However, they favor actions coordinated by the EU, rather than getting directly involved. This could be because they see bilateral economic support as ineffective, because they believe themselves to be more insulated from China’s direct retaliation if they hold back bilateral aid to Taiwan and focus more on EU-level action, or because they are less willing to bear the direct costs of supporting Taiwan.

This also means that Taiwan has, so far, not been successful in turning the increasingly favorable “peacetime” views of itself among the Central European public into favorability for economic and military aid in the event of Chinese invasion (or other type of contingency). Low support for various forms of aid to Taiwan during a conflict creates a layer of vulnerability that could be exploited by China’s FIMI operations and wartime propaganda. Consequently, improving its strategic communication and public diplomacy towards the Central European public, and convincing it that aiding Taiwan during a conflict is actually in its interest, emerges as one of the most urgent tasks for Taiwanese diplomacy in the region. Indeed, even if local political elites are inclined to provide military or economic support to Taiwan, such a policy would likely be short-lived if it is not backed by the public.