The Ministry of National Defense should speed up an evaluation of whether mandatory military service needs to be extended, a military expert said yesterday.
Retired army major general Richard Hu (胡瑞舟) made the comment after Deputy Minister of National Defense Bo Hong-hui (柏鴻輝) on Friday said that an assessment should take no more than one year.
China has been a continual threat, and the ministry and other national security agencies have been assessing the situation for years, so it should not take more than a couple of months to reassess what the nation needs, Hu said.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
Before the government makes an announcement on the service length, the Military Service Act (兵役法) stipulates that the defense ministry and the Ministry of the Interior must first assess troop capacity and recruitment sources, submit a proposal to the Executive Yuan for approval, and then send the approval to the Legislative Yuan as notice, Hu said.
If the service length is to be extended, it would not be implemented before 2024, as the act also stipulates that change can only “take effect one year after an announcement,” he added.
An assessment should not take that long, said Hu, who is also a researcher at the Taiwan Center for Security Studies, adding that the government should amend the act to shorten the assessment time before making any changes to conscription.
Kuo Yu-jen (郭育仁), a professor at National Sun Yat-sen University’s Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies, said that having a good plan before acting is more important.
Without sufficient planning, conscripted young people would have nothing to do if their military service was extended, he said.
Institute for National Defense and Security Research analyst Shu Hsiao-huang (舒孝煌) said that even if the service period was extended to a year, it would not be long enough for them to learn to skillfully operate precision-guided equipment — they could only serve as infantry soldiers.
The military would need to make appropriate adjustments to training camps and programs, he said, adding that bolstering combat capability is the most important.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said that any change to the length of the service period would affect people’s rights, so it is not something “that can be announced today and implemented tomorrow.”
The decision might even cause people to rush to fulfill their mandatory service, which is currently four months, before an extension could take effect, he said.
The government must give people time to prepare, as young people have career plans, he said.
If the service length is extended to one year, it might also affect the labor market, so thorough planning is needed, he added.
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