Taiwan has the 13th most powerful military in the world, according to a report by the Credit Suisse Research Institute.
The US topped the global ranking with an overall score of 0.94, according to the report on the trend of globalization. It was followed by Russia (0.8), China (0.79), Japan (0.72), India (0.69), France (0.61), South Korea (0.52), Italy (0.52), Britain (0.5) and Turkey (0.47).
Pakistan was ranked No. 11 with a score of 0.41, followed by Egypt (0.34), Taiwan (0.32), Israel (0.32), Australia (0.3), Thailand (0.28), Poland (0.23), Germany (0.19), Indonesia (0.12) and Canada (0.1), the report showed.
To give a sense of how major military powers relate to each other, the institute created a weighted military strength index that identifies six key elements of modern warfare, in which only conventional war capabilities were considered: Active personnel, tanks, attack helicopters, aircraft, aircraft carriers and submarines.
The report listed the top 20 nations based on these elements of military strength.
“Our analysis reveals the military superiority of the United States in conventional war capabilities compared with its close rivals. Its fleet of 13,900 aircraft, 920 attack helicopters, 20 aircraft carriers and 72 submarines far outweighs the military might of any of its close rivals and so does its defense spending worth US$610 billion last year, which is far more than the combined military expenditures of the next nine countries in our index,” the report said.
However, the report said that conventional forces are not the only indicator of military strength.
“Russia and the United States account for more than 90 percent of global inventories of nuclear weapons according to data provided by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Yearbook 2015,” it added.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
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