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    Territorial Defense in Taiwanese

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    The active and often effective participation of Ukrainian territorial defense in repelling the Russian invasion resulted in increased interest in such formations as the long and wide world. It takes a very interesting form in Taiwan, where the billionaire Robert Tsao is the initiator of creating paramilitary formations. There is no question of creating any private military, Tsao and his associates want to focus on civil defense training, with paramilitary training playing a secondary role.

    To begin with, a few words must be said about the preparation of Taiwan’s hinterland in the event of a war with China. In theory, the reserve system covers 1.6 million men, but in recent years it has been heavily “rusty”. Reservists were summoned once a year for five days, and the exercises rarely included field operations. A week after the start of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Taiwanese defense ministry extended the reserve exercises to fourteen days and included field operations in their program. President Tsai In-weng and her government are also considering extending compulsory military service from four months to at least a year. Importantly, this idea enjoys very strong support from the public. Similarly, interest in various forms of military training is growing.

    In the discussion on the defense of the Republic of China, there are also voices in favor of improving the functioning of civil defense. The “Comprehensive Defense Concept” adopted in 2017 provides for the mobilization of not only the police, fire brigade or health service, but also bus and truck drivers and construction workers in the event of an accident. In fact, anyone whose skills are assessed as useful can be called to the service. It is a separate matter whether the Taiwanese command, management and communication systems will cope with such a load, also in conditions of interference by the enemy.

    Tsao wants to deal with these shortcomings in the first place. Founder and former president of United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), the world’s second-largest manufacturer of integrated circuits, announced shortly after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan that it intends to donate three billion Taiwanese dollars (about US $ 100 million) to strengthen the country’s defense ministry and military capability. At a press conference on September 1, he provided more details. Tsao has created a $ 600 million Taiwanese fund to provide tactical training for citizens. Three million Taiwanese are to undergo training in three years.

    The contractor of the project is the Black Bear Academy (h膿ixi贸ng xu茅yu脿n y脿zh艒u h膿ixi贸ng), better known under the Japanese-English name Kuma Academy. The aim of this private organization is to provide the inhabitants of the island with knowledge in the field of civil defense and combat readiness by discussing issues, analyzing national conditions and promoting education in the field of broadly understood information activities. Kuma Academy is co-founded by Dr. Puma Shen, a lecturer at Taipei University and a specialist in the field of information warfare.

    The first course at the basic level started on September 4. Full-day classes conducted in groups of thirty to forty people are divided into four blocks: information warfare, introduction to modern warfare, first aid in combat conditions, evacuation exercises. The course is most popular among the 20- and 30-year-olds, and participants praise the classes. Thus, the popularity of training courses is growing.

    Puma Shen does not aim to train the most professional members of civil defense. He is more concerned with preparing people to deal with conflict conditions and thus avoiding panic. He attaches great importance to teaching students how to react to the information war. Disinformation activities aimed at lowering the enemy’s morale occupy an important place in Chinese concepts of war. Appropriate training is to avoid a situation in which the society loses faith in victory, although the army is still fighting effectively.

    Hence, the course covers the basics of the political systems of China and Taiwan. What are the differences between them, who performs the most important functions in the People’s Republic of China, who actually makes decisions and what decisions can be made, and what press spokesmen can and must say. Some of this information may seem trivial, but it is not common knowledge, and knowledge of such simple facts is extremely important in the fight against fake news.

    There are also plans for courses at a more advanced level, such as extended first aid. Later, however, Kuma Academy and Tsao are already entering the gray area between war and peace, an area that can no longer be classified as civil defense, but paramilitary operations. Further courses are to include the operation of drones and communication equipment, in-depth classes in the field of information warfare, and finally, the collection and analysis of OSINT data.

    However, Tsao is not giving up on territorial defense. Along with funding for Kuma Academy, it announced a $ 400 million Taiwan dollar donation for training “civilian sharpshooters.” Such an approach under the sign of “our stronghold will be our every threshold”, however, does not serve to strengthen the armed forces of the Republic of China as such, but is more an element of the psychological war with Beijing. Moreover, Tsao made no secret of the fact that the announcement of training sharpshooters was intended to discourage the Chinese leadership from thinking about the invasion and occupation of Taiwan.

    Robert Tsao

    Much attention of the Taiwanese media, in addition to the Tsao declaration, attracted his re-adoption of the citizenship of the Republic of China, which was an important element of the press conference of the seventy-five-year-old billionaire. In 2011, in protest against a government investigation in his company, he renounced Taiwanese citizenship and adopted Singaporean.

    What made him come back? The statements show that these were protests in Hong Kong and Beijing’s breach of the agreement to terminate the “one country, two systems” also offered to Taiwan. For many of the island’s inhabitants, the fate of the former British colony was a decisive factor in discouraging any form of peaceful reunification with China.

    Tsao called the Chinese Communist Party “untrustworthy thugs” and urged the Taiwanese not to believe Chinese claims that the inhabitants of both sides of the Taiwan Strait are part of the same family. He described all claims that the island is an integral part of China as nonsense. He also referred to the announcements made by some Chinese officials to “re-educate” the Taiwanese and kill opponents of the communist regime. He decided that if something like this had happened, it would be a war crime and a crime against humanity.

    “I am excited to regain Taiwanese citizenship and I want to stand with my fellow countrymen to fight the invasion of the Chinese Communist Party and protect Taiwan by making it” the country of the free and the home of the brave, “concluded Tsao.

    See also: USA? Russia? China? Who will benefit from the North African arms race?

    Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas

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