Taiwan’s military is ill-prepared to defeat a Chinese assault.
The video was impressive. Fighter jets streaking across the sky, missiles soaring atop columns of fire, tanks and artillery firing salvoes of shells. The video, recently posted on the Ministry of National Defense’s Twitter account, was supposed to showcase Taiwan’s ability to repel a Chinese invasion. “Don’t underestimate our determination to #protectourcountry,” the defense ministry wrote. “The #ROCArmedforces will not antagonise but we will respond hostile actions.” But is a real depiction of Taiwanese military might – or just a fantasy? For example, Taiwanese tanks are shown on maneuvers, creating the impression that a Chinese amphibious assault would be smashed by an armored counterattack. But the Taiwanese army’s combat units only have 60 to 80 percent of their personnel. “That number might not seem so bad until you realize it means at least a third of your tanks are useless in a war because there’s no one to man them,” a lieutenant colonel, who formerly commanded a tank battalion, told Foreign Policy Magazine. The problem is that volunteer soldiers – Taiwan’s military uses a mixture of conscripts and volunteers – prefer to avoid combat duty in favor of rear-echelon units. “This means that armor, mechanized infantry, and artillery units are always in desperate shortage of enlisted soldiers—even though they are expected to be the ones bearing the brunt of ground fighting against the formidable People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ground force if it comes ashore,” according to Foreign Policy.
