The military plans to recruit more college students this year for the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) in light of the program's growing popularity among college students.
The military is offering 150 spots this year for college students who want to join the program. The number of vacancies offered this year is more than half of those offered for the past four years combined. Colonel Chiu Chao-li (
"The high unemployment rate may be one of the factors behind the growth in ROTC vacancies, but it is by no means the only factor," Chiu said.
Chiu made the remarks yesterday at a regular ministry press conference.
The ROTC program, modeled after the US program, began in 1997, eight years after the ministry first thought of establishing an ROTC in Taiwan. Unlike the US program, however, Taiwan's is currently limited to the army only.
"The ROTC system is very important for the US military. It helps produce a large number of leaders for its forces. In 1989, for instance, the ROTC produced 245 generals for the US army, accounting for 56 percent of the generals in the service," Colonel Chiu said.
"Famous US military leaders who entered military service through the program include current secretary of state Colin Powell, ex-secretary of defense William J. Perry, and ex-army chief of staff General Gordon R. Sullivan," he said.
"We also plan to develop generals out of ROTC students. The first general to be born out of the program is expected to appear within 18 to 20 years," he said.
One of the program's first participants in 1997, Second Lieutenant Lin Wen-ping (
Lin graduated from the National Taiwan Ocean University.
"I thought of serving in the military as I was training at Chenkungling [a six-week military training course that used to be required for every male college freshman] in 1997. I decided to join ROTC right then," Lin said.
"I think there is a lot of fun in the military. I am very interested in tanks, so I choose the armored branch of the army as my specialty," he said.
The starting salary for a ROTC officer is NT$44,958 a month.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the