Military Personnel
A person in the ROC military may be an officer, a noncommissioned officer (NCO), or an enlisted man. He may be serving on either a volunteer or a conscript basis, and may be on active duty or reserve status.
The military plans to streamline total military personnel from its 2004 force level of 300,000 servicemen to 265,000 men by 2009, three years earlier than was projected by former Defense Minister Tang Yiau-ming. According to the 2008 defense budget plan, as of the end of 2009, the number of military personnel was to be reduced to a total of 275,000, including 250,000 on the regular MND payroll. On 05 December 2008 Vice Defense Minister Chang Liang-jen said that the Ministry of National Defense (MND) had started planning to push a fully professional voluntary military service system in a bid to build the country's military into "lean and mean" fighting force. The fully volunteer military program will be promoted in a gradual manner, with the number of uniformed men and women recruited through a voluntary enlistment system increasing 10 percent year-on-year from 2010 and eventually reaching a fully volunteer force by 2014, Chang said during a forum held in Taipei. According to an MND budget plan, the number of military personnel will have been reduced to a total of 275,000 by the end of 2008, including 250,000 on the regular MND payroll.
On 19 January 2009 the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said in a statement that the military was still working on a troop restructuring plan that will be drawn up based on the principles of integrating its service branches for combat missions and maintaining its overall combat capabilities. The ministry issued the statement after the China Times, a Taipei-based Chinese-language newspaper, reported that day that the military will proceed with a plan to slash the number of troops to facilitate its all-volunteer service program. According to the report, the military will cut the country's current 275,000 troops over the next four years, but had yet to decide on the level of cuts. The paper speculated that the final target would be 180,000 troops.
Officers
Officers in the ROC military generally come from three backgrounds. They might be graduates of military academies who become career officers, graduates of different specialized military schools who serve shorter terms of duty, or college graduates who have passed a written test to become reserve officers.
Approximately 15 percent of the officers commissioned each year are graduates from different military academies; another 45 percent are graduates of specialized military schools; and the remaining 40 percent are reserve officers.
The ratio of officers to NCOs is about 1:2.4, while that to enlisted men is 1:2.6. Thus, the ratio of officers to soldiers as a whole in the ROC Armed Forces is around 1:5, which is close to the 1:6 ratio of the US Armed Forces, and almost equals that of the Japanese Self-Defense Force (1:4.98).
Noncommissioned Officers
NCOs constitute the backbone of basic units of the Armed Forces, and are increasingly depended upon to train troops and develop their combat performance. In recent years, however, most senior NCOs have retired, leaving the current proportion of career NCOs too low and the percentage of NCO reservists in service too high. Reservists are on active duty for a very limited period of time, making it difficult for them to keep up with changes in the operation and maintenance of ever-more sophisticated weapons and equipment. Solutions to this problem lie in reconfiguring the NCO organizational structure and recruiting new NCOs.
Conscripts
The Military Service Law of the ROC stipulates that all males in the Republic of China shall fulfill military service. Article 3 of the law states: "Male persons shall be liable for military service on January 1 of the year immediately following the year during which they reach the age of 18, and shall no longer be drafted for service beginning on December 31 of the year during which they reach the age of 45." Citizens who have been sentenced to imprisonment for longer than seven years are prohibited from entering the military.
Under the Military Service Law, military conscription is administered jointly by the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of the Interior. The former is responsible for securing an adequate number of conscripts and training them, while the latter determines the sources of the conscripts and ensures their rights and benefits. Generally, conscripts undergo a minimum of two months of basic training before receiving their 22-month unit assignments.
Male senior high, vocational high, and college students whose studies would be interrupted by military conscription can defer their induction until after graduation. Students who are admitted to a university or college undergo two months of basic training in the summer before their freshman year. Upon graduation, they re-enter the military to fulfill the remainder of their two-year commitment.
Young men in poor health are exempt from military conscription. Those in average health may serve in the National Guard. Draftees from impoverished families may apply for service in this unit, giving them reserve status and allowing them to stay with their families. In addition, the only son of parents who are over seventy may also apply for National Guard service to fulfill his military obligation.
Military conscription is jointly administered by the MND and the Ministry of the Interior ???, with the former responsible for securing an adequate number of conscripts and training them, and the latter responsible for determining the sources of the conscripts and ensuring their rights and benefits. Conscripts generally undergo 22 months of training.
The Implementation Regulations for Substitutive Conscription was promulgated on February 2, 2000, and went into effect on July 1, 2000. Under these regulations, those deemed unsuitable for regular military service could fulfill their required military duties through substitutive conscription, based on interests or specialty. Categories for substitutive conscription include domestic security (police and fire fighters), social services (social, environmental protection, medical, and educational fields), and other categories designated by the Executive Yuan. In 2001, 8,295 eligible young men performed substitutive conscription, and this number increased to 10,055 in 2002.
Military Mobilization
The ROC defense strategy calls for maintaining a minimum force in peacetime and mobilizing a large number of troops in the event of war. The reservist system plays a key role in such a policy by facilitating instantaneous mobilization and instant combat readiness. At present, registered reservists in the ROC amount to about 3.8 million persons, or more than 18 percent of the general population. After a man is discharged from active duty, he must report to his local military reserve unit, a subunit under the Armed Forces Reserve Command. Reservists are organized into different units according to their military occupational specialty (MOS). Since a prolonged mobilization recall might adversely affect both the livelihood of a reservist and the overall economic development of the country, annual reservist training is usually conducted through recalls. An MOS refresher training course is conducted, and each reservist is notified of his unit combat mission and relative location.
