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.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods