TAIPEI - Current headlines made by the
militaries on both sides of the Taiwan Strait
could hardly be more different: mainland China's
People's Liberation Army (PLA) basks in glory,
while Taiwan's scandal-plagued Republic of China
Armed Forces is steeped in shame. Nonetheless, to
the Taiwanese - even in times when the island's
military stomps from one embarrassing scandal to
another - there's no thought of giving up its role
against former arch-foe communist China.
In the first three months of the year,
China's military men and women have had reason to
celebrate startling breakthroughs. To begin with,
the much-sooner-than-expected first test flight of
the PLA Air Force's (PLAAF) fifth-generation
stealth-fighter J-20
stunned both domestic and
international observers.
Then, by having
the missile frigate Xuzhou reaching waters
off riot-torn Libya to offer support and
protection for ships evacuating Chinese nationals,
the PLA Navy (PLAN) belied all those who have
maintained that China had significant difficulties
in operating far away from its own shores. The
PLAAF's four IL-76 transporters evacuating more
than 1,600 stranded Chinese shortly afterwards via
Sudan to Beijing also clearly did its share in
leaving an impression.
This is especially
because the flight path between China and Libya -
close to 10,000 kilometers across five nations -
has set a record for the PLAAF's large transport
planes. But the good news for the military didn't
stop there. By announcing an increase of its
defense budget by 12.7% this year to US$91.4
billion, Beijing made unambiguously clear that it
remains firmly committed to the beefing up of the
PLA.
That China's 2011 defense budget is
roughly 10 times Taiwan's, which is estimated at
US$9.2 billion, is far from being the Taiwanese
military's only worry. So many scandals involving
the island's armed forces have been filling local
newspaper pages in recent weeks that it's tempting
to assume that public confidence in the military's
combat capability is on the way to rock bottom.
First, there was embarrassing news that
over 60 serving military officers, sergeants and
soldiers were found to have joined a fake gigolo
training course. The servicemen paid the
equivalent of thousands of US dollars each to a
criminal ring to learn how to seduce wealthy
females.
Days later, coinciding with
Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington,
the test-firings of 11 different types of missiles
worked out worse than expected when six of the 19
missiles went astray. In what was likely meant by
the government as a political posture for the
domestic audience, apart from the AIM-120 AMRAAM
and Patriot PAC-2 missile systems, Taiwan's
military fired every type of air-to-air and
surface-to-air missile in its arsenal.
A
foreign journalist who observed the tests on site
described his impression on the perceived
amateurism displayed by the Taiwanese military
somewhat graphically. "We reporters there thought
the Taiwanese were about to kill us," he told Asia
Times Online.
Then a much harder blow
landed when the worst espionage scandal in
Taiwan's history evolved. One-star army General Lo
Hsien-che, who ran the communications, electronics
and information division of Army Command
Headquarters, was arrested for spying for China.
Lo is alleged to have spied on the Po Sheng C4I
program, the purpose of which is to enable
Taiwan's military to share information with the US
Pacific Command.
Apart from consequences
to Taiwan's military's warfare capabilities that
by some senior observers of Taiwan military
affairs were described as "disastrous", the
Pentagon's confidence in Taiwan's ability to
protect US defense technologies could have
suffered. As the Ministry of Defense's means of
choice to prevent future spy-cases, it makes it
compulsory for military attaches to undergo
lie-detector tests.
Adding to the
less-than-ideal impression the Taiwanese military
has so far been making in 2011, revelations
emerged that an air force private was wrongfully
executed 15 years ago. It was found that the
then-Air Force Political Warfare Headquarters
commander had violated the law by ordering
military counter-intelligence agents without
status as judicial officers to conduct the murder
investigation.
The disclosure that a
confession from the executed private had been
extracted after 37 hours of constant interrogation
and torture didn't place the military apparatus in
better light either.
Compared to the
political brouhaha the wrongful execution has been
causing, the emergence of photographs supposedly
proving that the Taiwan army uses ordinary paint
purchased at superstores as opposed to coating
that deflects night vision instruments can well be
considered a bagatelle.
As these
embarrassments occurred in the space of less than
two months, questions arise over the point at
which extensive and repeated media coverage on one
pratfall after another will affect the Taiwanese
public's psyche. At what point will public opinion
hold that throwing taxpayers' money at a seemingly
hopeless military is nothing but a waste? At what
point will an assessment be reached that trying to
resist a possible Chinese attempt to force
unification on Taiwan by military means is a lost
cause? According to analysts approached by Asia
Times Online, it's not quite yet the time.
Huang Hua-hsi, a legislative assistant,
said Taiwanese generally had little confidence in
the combat capability of their own armed forces.
Although many take possible threats from across
the Taiwan Strait rather fatalistically, he says,
this doesn't mean they want to give up on an
appropriate defense.
"In terms of
cross-strait military imbalance, the Taiwanese can
be quite insensitive," Huang says. "Taiwanese
often joke that in case of an outbreak of war with
China, they would simply hide somewhere in the
mountains for two weeks until it's over, and
that's it."
Still, Huang rejects the
notion that the recent scandals could lead to the
Taiwanese public wanting to spend less on the
military. "After the poor performance at the
missile test-firings in mid-January, public
sentiment called for upgrades of Taiwan's advanced
foreign-made weaponry," says Huang.
Dr
Steve Tsang, professorial fellow in Taiwan Studies
at Oxford University, states that rather than
giving up on it, the recent scandals "remind most
Taiwanese of the need for Taiwan to enhance its
own defense". He also expounds that the mindset on
the island remains rather defiant.
"The
people and government of Taiwan do not want to see
a military confrontation across the Taiwan Strait,
but if force were used by the PRC [People's
Republic of China] against them, it will be a
matter of protecting and defending their freedom,
dignity as individuals, family and homeland,"
Tsang says. "They will not surrender without a
fight, even if the odds look staggering."
Arthur Ding, a cross-strait military
affairs expert at Taiwan's National Chengchi
University, also implies that even under the
impression of overwhelming PLA military might and
seemingly never-ending scandals, the Taiwanese are
far from contemplating ideas to abandon the
support of the island's armed services.
Militarily, the odds aren't necessarily too bad
for the island, Ding says.
"The Taiwanese
military never sought to match the PLA, just as
the US never regarded Taiwan's ability to balance
power with the PLA as feasible," he says. "What
Taiwan seeks is to repel or delay a PLA operation
against Taiwan. In this regard, the opportunity is
there."
Jens Kastner is a
Taipei-based journalist.
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2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
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