Taiwan’s Impossible Choice: Be Ukraine or Hong Kong

People in Taiwan have been following every twist of the war in Ukraine. But, while their sympathy for the Ukrainian cause is near-universal, the conclusions for the island’s own future widely diverge.

To some, the takeaway is that even a seemingly invincible foe can be defeated if a society stands firm, an inspiration for Taiwan’s own effort to resist a feared invasion by China. Others draw the opposite lesson from the images of smoldering Ukrainian cities. Anything is better than war, they say, and Taiwan should do all it can to avoid provoking Beijing’s wrath, even if that means painful compromises.

These two competing visions will play out in Taiwan’s presidential elections, slated for January, and shape how the island democracy revamps its defenses as China’s military might expands. The soul-searching inside Taiwan, and the determination with which it will strengthen its armed forces, is also bound to affect the extent to which the U.S. will get involved militarily should Beijing try to capture the island, home to 24 million people—and most of the world’s advanced semiconductor production capacity.

While Taiwan has been living under a threat of invasion ever since China’s Communist Party took control of the mainland in 1949, the Russian thrust into Ukraine drove home to many Taiwanese that war can erupt with little notice. Chinese leaders have intensified their rhetoric around Taiwan, repeating that they won’t rule out using force to achieve what they call “national reunification.” Beijing has also ramped up naval and air probes around the island that wear out Taiwanese defenses. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimates that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has set 2027 as the deadline for his military to be ready to take the island.

“What Ukraine has underscored is that it’s not a remote possibility that an aggressive neighbor can unilaterally decide to take action against you. It’s a wake-up call,” said Enoch Wu, founder of the Forward Alliance, a nongovernmental organization that has started training Taiwanese civilians in emergency response and first aid. “The threat that we face is an existential one, and so our defense mission has got to involve the entire society.”

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wei has already moved to increase the length of compulsory military service starting next year,to one year from four months, and is boosting military spending as Taipei purchases new weapons from the U.S., such as hundreds of Harpoon antiship missiles. While Tsai isn’t eligible to run again, the presidential candidate from her ruling party—current Vice President Lai Ching-te—has similarly pledged to safeguard the island’s autonomy and resist Beijing’s growing intimidation.

“I don’t think anybody rational could look at this and say dialogue is going to change Xi or the CCP,” said Vincent Chao, a former national-security official and Lai’s spokesman, referring to China’s Communist Party. “They see the subjugation of Taiwan as part of their national rejuvenation, as something inherently connected to their political legitimacy. It’s incumbent upon any candidate to be realistic about the situation.” Ukraine, he added, has given Taiwan a “brilliant lesson” in how to defend itself—and how to build coalitions with like-minded democracies.

The main opposition Nationalist Party, known as the Kuomintang, holds a different view. “We want to talk to the Chinese. We believe that we can have a dialogue with the Chinese. That will certainly de-escalate the tension, to make sure no accidental war, and for sure no intentional war, happens,” Kuomintang vice chairman Andrew Hsia said in an interview before departing on a trip to China in June, his second this year.

Ukraine’s tragedy has made an outreach to Beijing even more vital, he added: “In the past we talked about war, but now for the first time we saw in our living rooms, on television, all this destruction. Are we ready for that? I don’t think we are, I don’t think we are that resilient.”

The Kuomintang’s presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, pledged this week that he would return the compulsory military service length to four months after improving ties with Beijing.

While the Kuomintang performed well during local elections last fall, opinion polls so far show Lai in the lead, though the presidential race is too volatile to call. A third candidate, Ko Wen-je, the centrist former mayor of Taipei, is also polling high, further confounding predictions.

Chinese leaders have watched with alarm how the Russian military stumbled in Ukraine, suffering high casualties and a series of setbacks that helped trigger the brief mutiny by the Wagner paramilitary group last month. But there is no indication that Xi, who has already squelched the autonomy and civil liberties enjoyed by Hong Kong, has become less determined to take Taiwan because of Russia’s difficulties, U.S. officials say.

A formidable natural barrier—more than 80 miles of water—separates Taiwan from the Chinese mainland, making any invasion far more complicated than Russia driving columns of tanks across the Ukrainian border in February 2022. Chinese troop-carrying ships and planes would be targeted by Taiwanese missiles, and initial casualties of any invading force are likely to be high.

The fact that Taiwan is an island, however, also makes securing ammunition and vital supplies, such as fuel to power its electricity plants, more complicated. The island’s small size—it occupies merely 6% of Ukraine’s surface area—provides little strategic depth should the Chinese military succeed in establishing some beachheads, as most wargames forecast will happen.

“For Taiwan, the situation is like David facing Goliath,” said Maj. Gen. Sun Li-fang, the spokesman for Taiwan’s military. “But this is our home country here, and the lifestyle of democracy and freedom is part of our values. We will protect it with whatever it takes.”

While the U.S. has no binding obligation to defend Taiwan and has long maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity on the issue, President Biden repeatedly cautioned that, unlike in Ukraine, the U.S. military would intervene directly should China attempt to seize the island by force. Before American troops deploy, however, the island would have to resist the first blows on its own. So far, despite recent improvements, it is far from ready, many U.S. officials and analysts say.

“The Taiwanese have to be committed 100%, because if they are not, there is no reason for the U.S. or any other nation to come to their aid,” said ret. U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Arlington, Va. “There needs to be a sense of urgency. America is not going to spill the blood of her sons and daughters over Taiwan if the Taiwanese are not willing to wholeheartedly prosecute the defense of their island and their people.”

While augmented over the past year, Taiwan’s military budget is still only 2.4% of the GDP—compared with well over 3% for the U.S., Poland’s 4% and about 5% in Israel. The professionalism and motivation of Taiwan’s military are a particular concern, Western officials say. The island’s main officer training school was originally established as Whampoa Military Academy in southern China in the 1920s, with heavy reliance on Soviet instructors. Outdated Soviet-style military culture and doctrine still persists in the ranks, defense analysts say.

Despite the recent increase in the length of conscription, education deferrals mean that most draft-age Taiwanese won’t serve the entire year until 2028—and it remains unclear to what extent the current training of draftees, which according to many soldiers produces few useful skills, will be modernized.

Currently, most draftees spend their time cleaning floors and picking weeds rather than learning how to repel Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army, said ret. Adm. Lee Hsi-min, a former chief of Taiwan’s military who has become a vocal critic of the island’s military preparedness.

“If you just do the same things for a year instead of four months, then you have a problem and a bad reputation,” he said. “The problem is the training content, not the training period. How you do it is much more important than how long you do it.” The military says it is working to improve the training.

Taiwan has also had trouble retaining its professional troops, including highly trained Air Force pilots. Taiwan’s defense ministry said in a recent report that roughly 20% of its career soldiers over the past five years have decided to leave the military before their contracts were scheduled to end. Just last year, more than 3,700 soldiers asked to quit, according to the report.

“A lot of young people who signed up for the four-year volunteer force decided to pay a penalty and dropped out early because they say they had come for the money—not to fight and not to die,” said Alexander Huang, the Kuomintang’s director of international affairs.

Taiwan’s troubled history with its own armed forces is part of the reason. The Kuomintang-led army and government led by Chiang Kai-shek escaped to Taiwan when Mao Zedong’s Communist forces ousted them from the Chinese mainland in 1949. Chiang’s military dictatorship attempted to suppress Taiwan’s sense of identity, seen as tainted by decades of Japanese rule over the island, and engaged in decades of what has since been called a “White Terror,” during which thousands of dissidents were killed.

President Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party, in power since 2016, emerged from the pro-democracy campaign against the Kuomintang’s rule in the 1980s, appealing in part to the Taiwanese sense of being distinct from the people of the mainland.

“In the past, Taiwan’s civilians were not very close with our military because our old military came from the outside, didn’t derive from inside the country. There was a giant gap between civilian people and military guys,” said DPP lawmaker Wang Ting-yu, a senior member of the Taiwanese parliament’s defense committee.

“But I have to say this is an old situation,” he added, saying that, under Tsai, Taiwan’s civilian-military relationship has transformed: “She made the military realize you need to defend democracy.” The government, he said, has increased pay for the troops and is modernizing the training programs, in part by bringing in foreign instructors and sending some Taiwanese units for exercises in the U.S.

These changes, however, have yet to translate into new attitudes among the general public, where service in the armed forces holds little prestige or appeal. Wang Chung-wei, a draftee who is heading to the military in the coming weeks, said that he, like most young Taiwanese men, wasn’t looking forward to the experience. “Not at all. It will be a total waste of time,” he said, adding he would rather stay home and work in the family business. “It doesn’t matter to me if China takes over. Our families have arrived here from China anyway.”

Phil Pi, 21, who served in Taiwan’s army last year, said he learned next to nothing during his stint. Because of Covid rules, the conscripts didn’t even go for a run since exercise with masks was deemed to be too grueling, he said. The men did, however, practice shooting at a range a handful of times.

“It was not a very useful experience. I was not trained to fight,” Pi said, adding that he and his friends won’t volunteer to go to the front line should China invade: “There would be no hope.”

Several other young people interviewed in Taipei’s Ximending shopping district echoed the sentiment, saying they saw little point in sacrificing their lives given China’s immense power.

“The young people are the ones who don’t want unification with China,” said ret. Lt. Gen. Chang Yan-ting, a former deputy commander of Taiwan’s air force. “But if you want independence, you need to fight, and they also don’t want to fight. Therein is the conflict.”

Yi-hao, a student in Taiwan’s National Defense University, was an exception. “Before the war in Ukraine, we were taught that Russia’s military power is stronger than China’s, and Taiwan’s military was stronger than Ukraine’s,” he said. “If they were able to resist this long, Taiwan will definitely be able to hold out.” He didn’t want his surname used because he wasn’t authorized by the military to speak.

Lai Yi-chi, who became a lieutenant after graduating from the Naval Academy in June, said that she had been inspired by the bravery and resilience of Ukrainian soldiers, something often discussed in her classes. “We should also embody such spirit and determination,” she said.

Bypassing the official armed forces, some volunteer groups have decided to act on their own, preparing fellow citizens for a possible war. One such group is Kuma Academy, which received a $100 million donation from Robert Tsao, the founder of the United Microelectronics, one of the world’s biggest semiconductor companies.

“We don’t intend to build up a private army,” Tsao said. “But I think their effort will probably increase the resilience of Taiwan’s society. If we know how to hide, how to help each other, how to retain communication, we can pretty much reduce the damage in wartime.” Some of the students also like to learn more martial skills, such as shooting, Tsao said, but Taiwan’s strict gun laws make it difficult. Some 25,000 Taiwanese have been trained at Kuma.

Nico Li, a 60-year-old retired musician attending a Kuma class, said she was unnerved by growing risks coming from China, and wanted to arm herself to avoid being a burden to her children. “Taiwan is an island of treasure. I don’t want to hand it over to others without a fight,” Li said, referring to what she sees as the Taiwanese values of freedom and democracy. “If I have the ability, I would even go and fetch a gun if necessary.”

At another training session, run by the Forward Alliance, dozens of Taiwanese practiced how to stop arterial bleeding with tourniquets and stabilize major wounds. “There is a sense of impending doom, of feeling very hopeless,” said one of the students, Eric Lin. “So, instead of sitting at home and browsing the negative news, I wanted to come here—so that I would be able to do something.”