Taiwan Extends Conscription to 1 Year To Counter China Threat

President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan announced an extension to her country's compulsory military service from four months to one year in a move to counter the growing security challenges posed by neighboring China.

The new draft will begin on January 1, 2024, and affect military-age males born after 2005, Tsai said in Taipei on Tuesday. The announcement was an effective reversal of her predecessor's policy of winding down conscription in favor of an all-volunteer force after only 10 years.

"The quantity and quality of the current four-month training regimen can no longer meet the rapidly changing situation and present combat readiness requirements," Tsai said.

Taiwan's leader and members of her cabinet laid out a new training regimen that will last 44 weeks, beginning with eight weeks of boot camp. Recruits will undergo some specialized weapons training typically reserved for professional soldiers, including the operation of drones and man-portable missile systems, the government said.

Those enlisted under the existing four-month draft will also be put through a revised training regimen when the new system begins, she said.

The plan, which will more than triple the pay of conscripts, promises to bolster a coming revamp to the island's armed forces, which still is to be led by Taiwan's current volunteer force of 180,000 troops, with a budget for up to 210,000 personnel.

The professional soldiers will remain Taiwan's front-line force, while conscripts and reservists will supplement the army and be tasked with territorial defense and the protection of key infrastructure, said Tsai. In addition, a long-mooted civil defense system will assist in wartime and aid disaster relief in peacetime.

"I must admit that this was an incredibly difficult decision," she said, calling national security and Taiwan's survival her "unavoidable responsibility."

"No one wants war, neither Taiwan's government, its people, nor the international community," Tsai said. "But, my fellow countrymen, peace will not fall from the sky."

Tsai prefaced the announcement by citing Ukraine's resistance against Russia's ongoing invasion, as well as the uptick in China's "intimidation and coercion" against Taiwan since August, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei was met with unprecedented war games by Beijing.

Both incidents gave new impetus to discussions about military reform, which Tsai said was reviewed every two weeks for the last two years. The shift in defense posture, she said, followed similar moves by the United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia and the Philippines "in the face of expanding authoritarianism."

At her first press conference in two years because of COVID-19, Tsai appeared confident that the policy change would hold across partisan lines if there were to be change in government following the 2024 presidential election.

She denied suggestions that the U.S.—Taiwan's strongest international backer and main arms supplier—had pressured her into the change. The White House, meanwhile, welcomed her announcement, saying it "underscores Taiwan's commitment to self-defense and strengthens deterrence," the Associated Press reported.

Wang Wenbin, China's foreign ministry spokesperson, urged the Taiwanese public to reject Tsai's move. "We believe the vast majority of our Taiwan compatriots are highly principled and will not be used as cannon fodder by Taiwan independence separatist forces," he told a regular press briefing in Beijing.

Beijing has claimed the democratically governed island for decades, but Taipei rejects China's sovereignty claims. The ever-increasing power imbalance across the Taiwan Strait, and Taiwan's objection to a political union with China, has become a potential flashpoint in U.S.-China relations.

The resumption of one-year military service is but one component of what Taipei promises to be a major defense overhaul, which has included a slow and heavily scrutinized transition to asymmetric warfare—fielding cheaper, mobile but lethal weapons systems to counter China's numerical advantage, as Kyiv has done against Moscow.

Other changes include a reform of the island's reserve forces, as well as a 12.9 percent budget hike for 2023, the first double-digit rise in years.

Shu Hsiao-huang, a research fellow at Taiwan's top military think tank, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said the four-month training regimen prevents conscripts from receiving specialized training, meaning they can't take on the combat tasks of professional troops.

"If [military service] is changed to one year, it would certainly provide more effective training to create soldiers qualified to operate sophisticated weaponry, who can then be called up or mobilized as reservists according to their assigned units and specialities," Shu told Newsweek in the weeks before Tsai's announcement.

More than 70 percent of Taiwan's public said they would take up arms to resist an armed occupation of Taiwan by China, according to a survey conducted one year ago this week. After Russia invaded Ukraine, however, there's also been consistent support for extending Taiwan's conscription period.

In a recent poll, 73.2 percent of respondents backed a lengthening of military service to one year, the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation said in a report last week. However, among the age group closest to military age—those between 20 to 24—only about one-third supported the plan.

The changes will reportedly include collaboration with Taiwan's education ministry to allow undergraduate students to fulfill the draft and complete their degrees within the standard four-year period, according to Taiwan's Liberty Times newspaper.

Taiwan's youth have traditionally sought to defer military service by pursuing higher education, partly because enlisting was viewed as an obstacle to their studies or careers. The implementation of a new study plan therefore could impact willingness to serve.

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