The military should distance itself from its Whampoa Military Academy roots and create a culture that is uniquely local, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party said yesterday.
The comments came after groups of retired soldiers recently mobilized former Whampoa members to attend the 99th anniversary of the academy’s founding in China.
The Whampoa Military Academy, founded by Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) in 1924, was a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) military academy before it was converted to a national academy in 1927. It was renamed the Republic of China Military Academy in 1946, symbolizing the nationalization of the army.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
At an event in Kaohsiung’s Fongshan District (鳳山), the party said there had been about 222 incidents involving selling information or spying for the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) between 2015 and 2020, many of which were conducted by retired military personnel calling in previous contacts in the military.
The party’s Chiayi chapter director Weng Huan-yao (翁渙瑤) said he was a student at the Republic of China Military Academy, and said that he was “baffled” by how everything about the academy, based in Kaohsiung, referenced Whampoa in Guangzhou, China.
Weng said many of his seniors had been seen at events hosted by China, making him question whether this was the “Whampoa spirit,” adding that he felt that the military should “liberate [itself] from Whampoa, and leave it in China.”
The Whampoa academy was funded by the former USSR, and was the product of the first collaboration between the KMT and the CCP from 1923 to 1927, the party’s Taipei chapter director Wu Hsin-tai (吳欣岱) said.
After the Nationalist-Communist split, the CCP continued to refer to the “spirit of Whampoa,” subverting the national identity of the Taiwanese military, Wu said, adding that the military should ditch “Whampoa” and create an army that belongs to Taiwan.
Historically, Whampoa has no ties with Taiwan, and the pro-China rhetoric of the “Whampoa spirit” easily creates cognitive dissonance among troops, party Chairman Wang Hsing-huan (王興煥) said.
Wang urged the military to distance itself from its Whampoa past, to remove references to the academy, to focus on the history of military academies in Taiwan and use local names for divisions.
The military must have a “Taiwan spirit” and enhance values such as duty, honor and loyalty to the country, Wang said.
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