Potential conscripts expressed mixed reactions over a significant pay raise announced by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Tuesday, after the government extended compulsory military service from four months to one year.
Tsai said the decision to extend compulsory military service was a tough one, but it had to be made “for the sustainable development and survival of Taiwan,” given that it takes more than four months to train a qualified solider.
Tsai also pledged to increase conscripts’ monthly pay, from a starting salary of NT$6,510 to NT$20,320, to ensure they have enough to cover basic daily expenses.
The military would also spend NT$5,987 per month on insurance coverage and food for each conscript, regardless of their length of service, which when added to the salary would come to NT$26,307 per month.
The plan would affect conscripts born on or after Jan. 1, 2005, and would take effect on Jan. 1, 2024.
The military estimated that 9,127 conscripts would serve for one year in the first year of the program.
A high-school student surnamed Chen (陳) who was born in 2006 and is likely to be required to complete a full year of military service, said on Tuesday that the extension had been anticipated in the past few months and the announcement was not a total surprise.
None of his classmates were talking about the service extension, he said.
“I suspect it is because there is no escape [from the extension], so whatever,” he said.
Asked if he believed the pay raise was a good incentive for the longer service period, Chen said it meant nothing to him, because “serving in the military means losing my freedom.”
Another high-school student surnamed Su (蘇) disagreed, saying that he believed one year of military service was “acceptable.”
“Four months is too short [for training], and one year could be more sufficient,” he said.
Su said the starting salary of more than NT$20,000 was also acceptable.
“After all, one might not be able to find a higher-paying job with a college degree,” he said.
Meanwhile, a man surnamed Wang (王) who did his military service in Taoyuan said that every month he spent NT$5,000 of his NT$6,510 salary to pay back student loans.
To save money, Wang, who lives in New Taipei City, said he rode his scooter to and from his military base in Taoyuan.
Others serving with him who lived in southern Taiwan spent almost all of their monthly pay on travel and daily expenses, he said, calling the pay increase “belated justice.”
Another man, surnamed Mai (梅), who served one year in a Hsinchu armored brigade during his service period, applauded the decision, saying it would help conscripts save money for emergencies.
Meanwhile, Han Gan-ming (韓岡明), a research fellow at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), said he believed the raise would make conscripts affected by the longer service period less angry and give them more incentive to serve.
INDSR research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said the government did its best to offer a significant pay raise, which should be applauded.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift