Taiwan President Lai Ching-te has implored the country's armed forces to shed their legacy as China's Nationalist Party army and urgently focus on their defense mission against an unprecedented threat from China.
Lai addressed instructors, cadets and veterans of the country's largest military school during a celebration of its founding as China's Whampoa Military Academy 100 years ago.
All instructors and cadets must understand the challenges and mission of the new era, Lai said. The biggest challenge is dealing with the sharp rise of China, which is destroying the status quo across the Taiwan Strait and views the annexation of Taiwan and the elimination of the Republic of China as its national cause.
The highest mission is to courageously shoulder the important responsibility of protecting Taiwan and maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, he added.
Lai's remarks underscored the new government's determination to push through reforms to a force widely criticized for its outdated command structure.
But the Taiwanese military's problems also stem from its ambiguous identity. The force was founded as the National Revolutionary Army in 1924 with support from the Soviet Union, as Sun Yat-sen sought to wrest control of the 13-year-old Republic of China for his Kuomintang, or nationalist party, to various warlords.
It fled to Taiwan in 1949 after its defeat in the Chinese Civil War, having been renamed the Armed Forces of the Republic of China, as it is known today.
The People's Republic of China has since claimed Taiwan as part of its territory and threatened to attack if Taipei refused to submit to its control indefinitely. Beijing has intensified its campaign of intimidation since Lai's Progressive Democratic Party took power eight years ago, most recently with punishment exercises last month after his inauguration, when he pledged to protect the sovereignty of Taiwan.
Although Lai's predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, undertook reforms including increasing budgets, reforming the reserve force, expanding conscription and improving training, the entrenched military culture prevented a transformation. more in-depth to respond to a modern force adapted to the country's acute defense needs.
Many military personnel continue to reject an identity centered exclusively on Taiwan rather than greater China, raising doubts about their loyalty in the event of war. Many bases maintain memorials to the late Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the battles fought to defend China against Japan in the 1930s.
The Whampoa Military Academy itself demonstrates this fractured identity. In Guangzhou, at the site of the academy's founding, the Communist Party held rival celebrations this weekend claiming Whampoa as the common heritage of a China that includes Taiwan. Dozens of nonagenarian Republic of China Army veterans who trained at the academy when it was in China attended the ceremony.
The Global Times, a Communist Party tabloid, published an interview on Sunday with Chiu Chih-hsien, head of an association of descendants of Whampoa graduates in Taiwan, who traveled to China for the event. He quoted Chiu as saying that the DPP was repugnant to Whampoa veterans because of its attempts to de-Initize Taiwan and deny the graduates' contribution to the war against Japan.
Lai, in his speech, attempted to balance respect for heritage with a message about the need to move forward. After a brief nod to the sacrifices of China's Whampoa veterans, he said: The nature of the armed forces is continually transforming with the development of the nation, from a party army to a national army, from a revolutionary force to a professional force, from fighting for the prime minister to fighting for the country and the people.
Without Taiwan, there is no Republic of China, he added, warning that the Taiwanese military must not fail to distinguish friends from enemies.
Successive Taiwanese governments have struggled to replace the rigid, hierarchical military culture with more flexible command structures that empower small units at the operational level, changes that experts say will be crucial in the event of conflict with China.
In a demonstration of the changes to come, Taiwan's celebration included a final performance of goose-stepping, a practice very common in authoritarian regimes, and which has come to symbolize the outdated culture of the Republic of China armed forces . Wellington Koo, the new defense minister, said goose-stepping would be abolished in favor of training focused on combat skills.
Tsai has done much to improve soldiers' living conditions and raise the image of the armed forces, but her efforts have failed to reach our military education system, said Enoch Wu, a former special forces officer and official of the National Security Council who now leads Forward Alliance, a non-governmental group specializing in civil protection.
Even today, our cadets learn the Whampoa spirit, but what spirit is it? This is the spirit of a Leninist party army. This army is an army that has suffered defeat, Wu added. What they should learn is…for whom and what to fight for the nation, for our freedom and our democracy.
