President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is expected to call a high-level national security meeting on Tuesday during which she would order the expansion of conscription from four months to one year, a source familiar with the matter said.
On Dec. 7, Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) told lawmakers that a decision on the length of military service would be announced before the end of the year.
With one week left before New Year’s Eve, the only option remaining for the Tsai administration to prolong conscription is through an executive order — an avenue that the government is willing to take, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Photo: Tyrone Siu, REUTERS
Assuming the order is promulgated on Saturday, the implementation of the policy would begin no earlier than Jan. 1 and affect conscripts born in 2006, they said.
Military-aged men performing alternative civil service would also have their service terms extended to a year, up from six months, the source said.
The salary for military conscripts is to be increased to NT$15,000 per month, they added.
Leading Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers in the party’s caucus and the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee have been briefed on these developments by the Presidential Office and the Ministry of National Defense, the source said.
Tsai is expected to personally announce the change and leave it to the Executive Yuan to finalize the policies, while the Legislative Yuan would receive a notification as soon as Friday, they said.
As the legislature is extending its current session to Jan. 13, there should be enough time for lawmakers to take receipt of the executive order, the source said.
A decline in population and the rising threat posed by China means Taiwan must fall back on conscription to have the necessary number of troops to defend itself, the Central News Agency cited an internal report by the ministry as saying.
Although a professional military comprised of five-year volunteers would be the most efficient force, such goals could be unobtainable due to the nation’s changing demographics and China’s increasingly formidable amphibious capabilities, the report said.
The military recruited 70,495 volunteers from 2016 to last year, which was equivalent to enlisting 0.3 percent of the population each year, matching the enlistment rates in other democracies, it said.
While Taiwan could before 2016 draw volunteers from a pool of about 110,000 military-aged males per year, the number of men available to the military has declined every year since 2019, it said.
By 2025, the military would not be able to recruit more than 9,305 new volunteers, a decrease of 4,709 compared with the current levels and insufficient for meeting national defense needs, it said.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
RSS