Confusion is the order of the day in the military after its command structure began a new mode of operation on March 1.
Leading the issues that have become muddled since the changes took effect is the question of which leader has the responsibility to order a retaliatory strike in case of attack.
Minister of National Defense Tang Yao-ming (
But not all military leaders agree with Tang, since there is no description of such a power either in the Defense Law or the amended Organizational Law of the Ministry of National Defense, which provides the legal basis for the new military command structure.
Major General Lu Hsiao-lung (
Lu failed to provide an explanation for his views.
Under the old system, the chief of the general-staff had the undisputed power to order a response, as he was the most powerful person in the military and reported directly to the president.
But after the new system became operational, this was no longer the case and the presumption was that the responsibility for deciding the time and place to respond to aggression would fall on the armed forces' civilian leader -- the minister of national defense.
After the restructuring, the defense minister was supposed to be -- in name and in fact -- the leader of the military.
But there remain quite a number of military leaders -- like Major General Lu -- who fail to grasp the new military command system.
Another part of the new command system which remains puzzling is who would exercise the powers of defense minister if the minister is absent from office or incapacitated.
Today, the defense minister has one chief of staff and two deputy ministers. The two defense laws do not mention, however, which one of the three is to exercise power on behalf of an absent minister.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that while the chief of the general-staff militarily outranks the two deputy ministers, under the new command structure he is on an equal footing with them.
One of the deputy ministers is former air force chief General Chen Chao-ming (
Chen is the deputy minister for armament affairs, while the other deputy minister is to handle administrative affairs.
Chief of the general-staff Admiral Li Chieh (
Under the arrangement, the three deputies to the minister are on the same level in the command structure.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching