The Ministry of National Defense yesterday estimated that there would be more than 20,000 military casualties in less than half a day were China to launch a full-scale missile attack on Taiwan.
"The military has plans to use 43,000 reservists to replace these casualties," said Deputy Minister of National Defense General Chu Kai-sheng (朱凱生) during a National Defense Committee meeting at the legislature yesterday.
Chu said the ministry had assessed that it would lose between 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers if Beijing launched a five-wave missile attack that continued for 10 hours aimed at Taiwan's airstrips, seaports, military units and economic and political nerve centers.
China's more than 800 missiles give it the capability to launch such attacks, Chu said.
He said the assessment was based on the results of computer-based war games.
The assessment of casualty numbers is updated annually taking into account the number of Chinese missiles and Taiwan's defense capabilities, Chu added.
He said at the beginning of any war, the number of casualties would be large, however, the number would decrease as the war continued.
Chu refused to comment on how many military personnel would be killed were a war to continue for two weeks.
He said that China wants to seize the nation with as few Taiwanese casualties as possible.
Ministry officials have said China's ballistic missiles are getting more precise. They used to have margin of error of around 600m, but that has now been reduced to 50m, giving Beijing the capability to hit Taiwan's power stations, radar bases, airstrips and military, economic and political nerve centers more accurately.
The main ballistic missiles that make up China's arsenal are DF-11 missiles that have a range of 600km, and DF-15 missiles that have a range of 800km.
Taiwan's military has begun moving from reliance on conscription to a volunteer basis.
By 2008, volunteers will comprise 60 percent of military manpower, while 40 percent will be conscripts.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
AIR ALERT: China’s reservation of airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea could be an attempt to test the US’ response ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting, the NSB head said China’s attempts to infiltrate Taiwan are systematic, planned and targeted, with activity shifting from recruiting mid-level military officers to rank-and-file enlisted personnel, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) integrates national security, intelligence operations and “united front” efforts into a dense network to conduct intelligence gathering and espionage in Taiwan, Tsai said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. It uses specific networks to screen targets through exchange activities and recruiting local collaborators to establish intelligence-gathering organizations, he said. China is also shifting who it targets to lower-ranking military personnel,
RSS