Taiwan said to extend military service as China dials up pressure | Conflict News

Taiwan’s president is expected to announce that compulsory military service will increase from four months to one year.

Taiwan appears set to extend compulsory military service from its current four months to one year, a senior government official and local media has said, as the self-ruled island comes under increasing Chinese military pressure.

The office of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said she would call a national security meeting on Tuesday to discuss reinforcing the island’s civil defence, followed by a news conference on new civil defence measures.

The official Central News Agency, citing government and ruling party sources familiar with the matter, first reported late on Monday that Taiwan’s government would be announcing its plan to extend compulsory military service.

“China’s various unilateral behaviours have become a major concern for regional security,” a Taiwanese official told the Reuters news agency.

Under the plans due to come into effect in 2024, conscripts would undergo more intense training, including shooting exercises and combat instruction used by US forces, said the official, who declined to be named.

Conscripts would be tasked with guarding key infrastructure, enabling regular forces to respond more swiftly in the event of any attempt by China to invade, the official added.

Taiwan’s defence ministry declined to comment.

Taipei, which rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, reported the largest-ever Chinese air force incursion into the island’s air defence identification zone on Monday, with 43 Chinese planes crossing an unofficial buffer between the two sides.

China also staged extensive war games near the island in August following a controversial visit to Taipei by then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

On Saturday, Beijing berated Washington for its new US defence spending bill which, with military support earmarked for Taiwan, amplified a “China threat” narrative, according to China’s foreign ministry. The ministry said in a statement that the defence bill  “severely affects peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait”.

Mandatory military service was once deeply unpopular in Taiwan, and previous governments under the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the main opposition Kuomintang cut the period of service for men from more than two years to four months to please younger voters. At that time, tensions had eased between Taipei and Beijing.

In recent years, China has stepped up diplomatic, military and economic pressure on the self-governed island to accept Beijing’s rule. Amid increasingly tense relations, polling showed that more than three-quarters of the Taiwanese public now believes that four months of military service is too short.

Tsai is also overseeing a broad military modernisation programme, championing the idea of “asymmetric warfare” to make the island’s forces more mobile, agile and harder to attack.

China’s growing assertiveness towards the island as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have prompted debate in Taiwan about how to boost its defence systems.

Taiwan’s government also says that only Taiwanese people can decide their future and has pledged to defend itself if attacked by China.