Taipei, Taiwan – At the Jing-Mei White Terrorist Memorial Park, a one-time school-turning detention center, visitors can walk around the buildings where some of Taiwan’s most prominent political prisoners were detained, questioned and tried during 38 years of martial law.
The museum takes visitors through arrest facilities, a replica court and exhibits with evidence from ex-prisoners to give visitors a sense of life at the time, now known as the White Terror.
Many of the political prisoners were arrested by the military police and the Taiwan Garrison Command, known as “the most nefarious part of the military,” said Bill Sharp, a visiting scholar in the history department of Taiwan National University.
“It was the Taiwan Gestapo and if you fell out of government, you would knock on your door in the wee hours and say: ‘You have to join us’.”
The Taiwan Garrison Order was formally disbanded in 1992, shortly before Taiwan’s transition to democracy but its legacy has left the public with an inevitable idea of what could happen when the armed forces gain untested power. and for years they have thwarted efforts to develop modern weapons.
“The image of the military in Taiwan is very poor and most people trust the army [because] of the White Terror when the military was a pillar of totalitarianism, dictatorship and spent a lot of money, ”said Sharp.
Where there were once thousands of troops on offshore islands such as Kinmen, just six kilometers (3.73 miles) from China and in large numbers on the coast, for most of the last decades the military has been struggling to find enough people to fill its ranks.
Taiwan is rethinking its approach to organizing its armed forces in dealing with an increasingly insecure China [File: Ritchie B Tongo/EPA]
Ironically, it was only with the 2016 election of Tsai Ing-wen as president – that his party was formed in the 1980s to some extent to challenge martial law – that the situation began to change.
Tsai has made military modernization a key policy, regularly visiting troops to build confidence, making extensive arms purchases and supporting the rise in arms spending to a high of $ 15.2bn to help Taiwanese fortify against their historic rival: the People’s Republic of China.
‘All Burning Gallery Streets’
The government has added public value for the military by announcing Chinese military movements near Taiwanese territory, which appear to have increased over the past year to near-daily events from after Chinese President Xi Jinping promised to “recapture” Taiwan with force if necessary.
Now one year into her second term, Tsai is something that could be more politically dangerous as her party’s support base is among children under 40 – raising the island’s military resources.
Any changes are likely to call for more young Taiwanese, especially his men, who already want four months of armed recreation in addition to regular review courses until age 35.
While Taiwan’s reserves are close to 1.7 million, according to the World Fire Energy Index, those on active duty are estimated at between 150,000 and 165,000. Many experts question whether the island’s armed forces are even strong enough to meet the growing threat posed by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – and the remaining two million active workers – just across the sea.
“When you face a challenge like you do in the PLA, four months is not going to cut,” said Michael Mazza, a visitor in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “The biggest problem over those four months is how little training thereafter: a week or less a year for eight years. In theory, you have this huge reserve force that has received very little training, “
Since the 1990s, the PLA has made significant progress in its quest to become a “world-class force,” enabling it to not only control the controversial South China Sea but also invade Taiwan. , where the Beijing Communist Party claims sovereignty.
In a Department of Defense report released last September, the U.S. was present that the PLA was preparing for a situation where they could try to “unite Taiwan with the mainland by force , ”And any attempt to push back“ third-party intervention ”in the form of the U.S. military comes to the defense of the island.
Tsai Ing-wen has done a great job to boost arms and boost his career if he defends Taiwan since he became president in 2016 [File: Ritchie B Tongo/EPA]
“Taiwan has traditionally made up for a quantitative disadvantage compared to the PLAs with a huge qualitative advantage over their enemies – better equipment, training, teaching and so on. But now, in most areas where qualitative gain is gone and because of China’s long-term weapons renewal plan, it is not returning, ”said Kharis Templeman, adviser to the project on Taiwan in the Indo- Pacific at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute. “Taiwan simply cannot directly take over the PLA in a peer-to-peer fight if Beijing adds full power to the fight.”
Opposing such a powerful opponent, Taiwan has begun shifting its defense policy to an “unjust” one, developing the kind of mobile and military units that would prevent an attacking force from approaching. land ever. The government has recently begun buying new weapons such as rocket launchers, drones and sea missiles and building the first home-made submarines, but raising the reserves would also play a vital role, he said. Mazza.
“In a wartime situation, the resources become very important, especially if the PLA gets a beach head. The reserve force has the potential to be a real deterrent to China’s invasion as it can be trained and basically armed to fight for every square inch of land between the beaches and the cities, to turn every city street. to a firing gallery, “he said.” The question is whether that’s something Taiwan ‘s reserve force can do and people are reasonably skeptical about that. “
‘Waste of time’
Noting the weaknesses, military designers have already embarked on organizational changes, said Liao “Kitsch” Yen-Fan, a security analyst at Taiwan’s National Defense and Security Research Institute.
In October, Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense announced the establishment of the Movement and Defense Administration, a new unified agency to oversee the repositories.
The ministry is also reorganizing training programs for collectors – divided into coastal defense, emergency centers and urban and backyard defense, with subscribers focusing on urban areas, Liao said. Since 2017 it has started calling recently retired people in their 30s and 40s for refresher courses, he said, although subscribers have also announced qualitative improvements in the call their annual.
“Many people who were recently informed said that their recent experience was very different from previous situations and is a much more intense experience,” Liao said. “For example, the restriction on the amount of weapons available for each training session has been removed. Now it is as much as you need and in addition, they have been asked to familiarize with basic skills and low-level techniques in the field. This is great for good, even though it may not translate into real combat power. “
Taiwan has spent more than three decades under military law and too much military regulation has left many people suspicious of the armed forces. [File: Ritchie B Tongo/EPA]
The toughest sales, however, could be a proposal from the defense ministry to extend console review courses in 2022 from around seven days every second year to 14 days a year, although salaries go up in the table as well. It will also try to learn from others – a delegation is expected to travel to Israel this year to examine how its repositories are organized and the country ‘s rapid transit system.
Experts, however, say more is needed, from more funding to reorganizing how resources are called for – making the transition to calling units of sanctuaries instead of individuals to build confidence and improve group coherence.
One change that many experts agree is necessary, but unlikely, is whether Taiwan is fulfilling its promise to become a volunteer weapon.
While many are keeping an eye on signing as a result of the historic legacy of martial law, the island has a more serious problem – its population is declining.
The government has turned to women to fill the gap, although Taiwan still lags behind countries such as Singapore and Israel, according to a review of its armaments by RAND Corporation. Coercion for women has been featured in public opinion polls.
For now, patriotism is the biggest force for recruitment.
“In the event of a major military crisis, this could increase the demand for Taiwan’s armed forces in a hurry. Already, the air force is getting a lot of positive press these days because of how often they stop Chinese military planes, ”Templeman said.
“But the most important thing is to make basic training more organized and relevant to a real war. People are very frustrated by the fact that most people who have gone through it see it as a complete waste of time: many trainers do not even learn how to fire a gun. If, in trying to create unit-level action resources, basic training is updated and strengthened, that could help, paradoxically, ”he said.