A new poll shows that nine out of ten Chinese people would support the use of armed force to protect Chinese sovereignty over a disputed group of islands in the East China Sea.

Taiwan's China Times and China's Global Times conducted a survey of one-thousand-500 Chinese and Taiwanese people 18 and over. Overall, 90-point-eight percent of respondents were in favor of the use of military power in the territorial dispute.

Forty-one-point-two percent of Taiwanese respondents supported the idea of using military power to settle the conflict over the islands, which are known as "Diaoyu” in Chinese and “Senkaku” in Japanese.

Five percent of Chinese respondents and 31 percent of Taiwanese respondents opposed the use of armed force.

Fifty-two percent of Chinese people and 40 percent of Taiwanese people answered that the territorial dispute over the group of islands may lead to a military conflict with Japan.