The military might risk a shortage of conscripts if it fails to transition to a voluntary enlistment system by 2019, the Control Yuan and the Ministry of the Interior said.
The ministry last year said that by next year, 30,000 men born before 1993 would still not have served their mandatory service, and that by 2018, only 17,000 men would be left for drafting, with the number expected to plummet further to 7,000 in 2019.
The cut-off date of last year was decided in accordance with the plans drawn up by former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration in a bid to transition to an entirely voluntary enlistment system by 2014, a goal that has been delayed multiple times.
Minister of National Defense Feng Shih-kuan (馮世寬) recently said that men who turned 18 last year would not be drafted provided that more than 90 percent of the military is comprised of voluntary personnel by 2018.
However, the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center said in a report that as of September, volunteers only accounted for 75.72 percent of total personnel.
The interior ministry also cited statistics showing that the nation’s birthrate is on the decline, and the Ministry of National Defense’s recruitment efforts have been hurt by incidents such as the death of army Corporal Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘) in July 2013, just three days before his conscription period was to end, from heat exhaustion allegedly caused by intensive exercising ordered by superiors.
An Academia Sinica poll last year found 61 percent of respondents backed dropping the current all-volunteer policy and revert to conscription.
Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on Thursday said that the necessity of an all-voluntary military should be reassessed, noting that such a system might contravene the Constitution, which states that male Taiwanese are obliged to serve in the military.
In other news, the defense ministry has deferred its military restructuring plan to late next year, after it proposes new strategic goals, at the request of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.
The military reduced its number of personnel in 2014 and planned to conduct downsizing again to between 170,000 and 190,000 personnel as part of its transition to an all-volunteer force.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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