A US Department of Defense report on China’s military power raised doubts about Taiwan’s plans for an all-volunteer force as the Ministry of National Defense prepares to terminate one-year conscriptions this year.
The all-volunteer military would cost more than the government had anticipated and drain funds from self-defense, training and budget reserves, the department said in an annual congressional report titled Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2018.
The report, which focused on developments from late last year to early this year, said that the nation had about 215,000 armed forces personnel, 75 percent of whom were volunteers, in addition to 1.7 million reservists.
Following the modernization of the armed forces, active service personnel would probably fall to 175,000, it said.
Although savings from reducing troop numbers had led to improved pay, benefits, housing and subsidies for service members, the savings were inadequate to attract and retain soldiers in an all-volunteer force, the report said.
In the interim, unforeseen expenditure had been covered by allocating funds away from initiatives ranging from the procurement of indigenous arms, training programs and budget reserves, it said.
The annual budget for the military remained at about 2 percent of GDP, while China outspent that by a factor of 15, it said, adding that most of China’s military spending was in preparation to invade Taiwan.
The US report differed from public information published by the ministry on some points.
The ministry has said that personnel numbers would remain at 215,000 and there were no plans to further downsize in the immediate future.
Excluding new inductees, trainees and those hospitalized, the armed forces should have 188,000 troops, but actual numbers fluctuate from 150,000 to 160,000, ministry data showed.
Minister of National Defense Yen De-fa (嚴德發) in March told lawmakers that the ministry believes it would meet the goal of having 160,000 service personnel by the end of this year.
However, the Control Yuan and the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center have also expressed misgivings about the effect of the all-volunteer initiative on budgets and troop quality.
Despite the transition to an all-volunteer force, the military’s combat power has not improved appreciably, a situation due largely to lowered enlistment standards and fast-tracked promotions, the Control Yuan said in a report earlier this year.
Control Yuan officials were unable to evaluate whether a volunteer or conscript force would be superior, while personnel and administrative costs have grown to a point where they could impede funding for other essential programs, it said.
Last month, the Budget Center submitted its fiscal report, saying the military in December last year had 146,785 service personnel, short of the ministry’s goals.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS