Taiwan to extend military service in face of Chinese pressure

President says decision was extremely difficult and acknowledges international interest in the island’s willingness to defend itself.

Tsai Ing-wen announces the extension in military service on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Taiwan will extend mandatory military service for male citizens, a once politically unpalatable move that has become imperative in the face of growing concerns about a Chinese attack and intensifying competition between Washington and Beijing.

Conscription will increase to a full year, from the current four months, in 2024, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said late on Tuesday.

“This was an extremely difficult decision,” Ms Tsai said. “Peace depends on national defence, and national defence depends on the whole population.”

The announcement on conscription came two days after the People’s Liberation Army sent more than 70 warplanes on sorties near Taiwan, in what the Chinese military said was a response to unspecified “collusion and provocation by the US and Taiwan”.

A day earlier, President Biden had signed a defence-policy bill that authorises up to $US10bn over five years to finance sales of weaponry and military equipment to Taiwan, as well as to provide training and other security assistance to the island.

The Taiwanese leader said that conscript pay, currently the equivalent of $314 a month, would be increased to close to minimum wage, which is set to rise to $1269 per month in 2024. Training will also be intensified and expanded to involve instruction on the use of Javelin anti-tank missiles and drones, she said.

The decision was the result of two years of discussions, Ms Tsai said.

US military analysts have long urged Taipei to consider extending conscription as a contingency in the event of a Chinese invasion. Discussions accelerated following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, seen by some in Taiwan as a wake-up call.

The White House welcomed the conscription change, which a spokesperson said “underscores Taiwan’s commitment to self-defence and strengthens deterrence”. The spokesperson reiterated the US commitment to assist Taipei in maintaining its defence capabilities but also warned that Washington opposes any unilateral change in the status quo by either Taiwan or China.

Ms Tsai denied that US pressure played a role in the final decision on conscription, but she acknowledged international interest in the island’s willingness to defend itself against Chinese aggression.

“I believe all the countries in the world that care about Taiwan will see how much importance we attach to self-defence,” she said.

Roughly 80,000 Taiwanese are conscripted each year. After they finish their training, they join the island’s more than two million reservists. Taiwan maintains a standing army of around 180,000 soldiers, compared with the Chinese military’s roughly two million.

Taiwan used to require male citizens to complete around two years of military service, a legacy of confrontation with China’s People’s Liberation Army dating back to the Chinese civil war. After Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist, or Kuomintang, army fled to Taiwan following its defeat by Mao Zedong’s communist forces in 1949, the two sides continued skirmishing over the next decade and remained closed off from each other until the late 1980s.

Leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, which has never ruled Taiwan, continued to claim the democratically self-ruled island as part of Chinese territory, but growing economic ties between the two led to a thawing of tensions. In Taiwan, young people increasingly came to see conscription as an outmoded and wasteful burden. Taipei gradually shortened the length of mandatory service throughout the 2000s as part of a plan to eventually move to an all-volunteer military.

Difficulty recruiting soldiers meant conscription never fully went away. Meanwhile, rising tensions across the 160km-wide Taiwan Strait have sparked questions about the island’s ability to defend itself against a Chinese attack.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has made taking control of Taiwan — by force, if necessary — a central plank of his campaign to achieve a “China Dream” of national rejuvenation. In recent years, he has grown alarmed by Ms Tsai’s pursuit of closer ties with Washington.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February rattled many in Taiwan and gave new weight to exhortations by US military officials of the island’s need to bolster its defences. Ms Tsai said Taiwan had taken note of both the determination of the Ukrainian people to defend their homeland and the training level of Ukrainian troops.

That combination “has given the world enough time to provide the help Ukraine needs,” she said.

Tensions between Beijing and Taipei flared this summer after a visit to Taiwan by US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, the highest level US political leader to travel to the island in 25 years, with the Chinese military encircling the island in a mock blockade. Mr Xi and President Joe Biden have since tried to calm relations, though the island remains the most dangerous flashpoint between the world’s two superpowers.

Washington is committed under US law to assist Taiwan in maintaining its defences, and Mr Biden has said multiple times that Washington would come to the island’s aid in the event of a Chinese invasion.

Among Taiwan’s most pressing defence concerns, according to military strategists and officials, is poor preparation among conscripts and reservists. Critics have attacked the quality of Taiwan’s basic training, with a number of former soldiers saying they spent large chunks of their time in the military sweeping leaves, moving spare tires and pulling weeds.

“Making the year of conscription more meaningful and making the country safer,” Ms Tsai said. “I believe this is the common goal of the 23 million people who grew up on the land of Taiwan.”

Public support for the move is difficult to gauge. Nearly three quarters of people in a survey conducted by local pollster Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation earlier this month said they supported extending conscription to one year.

Yet among respondents ages 20 to 24 — those most likely to be affected by the changes — support fell to around 35 per cent in the latest poll from 56 per cent in March. The new extended conscription will apply to males born on or after January 1, 2005.

Taiwan’s opposition Nationalist Party, despite its advocacy of a less confrontational approach to mainland China, has acknowledged the urgency in revamping Taiwan’s military for the possibility of conflict.

Johnny Chiang, a Nationalist MP, described Ms Tsai’s move to extend the length of conscription as a reflection of failures of earlier efforts to build up a more robust all-volunteer force.

“It’s a pity that there isn’t a thorough review over what strategy Taiwan really needs in modern warfare,” he said.

Ms Tsai’s focus on anti-tank missiles and drones appears aimed at addressing one common complaint — that Taiwan was focused on buying big-ticket military hardware like tanks that wouldn’t necessarily serve it well in the kind of combat that it is likely to encounter in a conflict with China.

Still, some military analysts have pointed to a nearly $US19bn ($28.2bn) backlog of weapons deliveries from the US to Taiwan, including Javelin and Stinger missiles that Taiwan ordered in 2015, which haven’t arrived as Washington prioritises military assistance to Ukraine. That has raised questions about whether Taiwan’s military will have enough gear for training purposes.

Chieh Chung, an associate research fellow with Taiwan’s National Policy Foundation, a Nationalist Party-affiliated think tank, said Taiwan is also short of training venues and resources to meet an expected surge in incoming conscripts. He called the military’s plans “not realistic enough”. Along with budget constraints created by the extended conscription program, “we will only be able to offer to train conscripts in one single skill,” Mr Chieh said. “Do not expect them to perform multiple tasks.”

The Wall Street Journal