Was curious if anyone I've ran into was still publishing articles through them, so I took a look at the War on the Rocks
@abc李 posted, and skimmed a few of the pieces that they've recently published.
The articles I scanned were better sourced and written than what I had seen from them in the 2010s, but I also noticed that
of the
were literally written by
what some folks might consider and
who
may stand to benefit financially from supporting Taiwanese independence.
Too lazy to break this down further, but it's pretty obvious similar conclusions can be reached about some of their authors writing on Ukraine. IYKYK.
With that said, it is probably better to categorize many, if not most of their articles as
political advocacy rather than as any sort of meaningful political, economic or military analysis.
The "problem" with the officer corp of the military of the Republic of China isn't that they're incompetent, but rather that many of them are aware of the fact that they're on the losing side, and no one wants to be on a sinking ship.
This has inspired many of them to
shall we say reevaluate and to (re)embrace their Chinese heritage and identity.
It is widely accepted that their officer corp tend to be significantly more pan-Blue than pan-Green as compared to the rest of the island's population, so in a way this is not an inorganic situation. A part of it is because a disproportionate percentage of them descend from waishengren military officers who had fled to Taiwan in 1949. Another part of it is because their officer corp belongs to an institution that still largely considers itself a part of the Republic of China (rather than some sort of aspirational or imagined Republic of Taiwan), and as such fundamentally Chinese.
For example, their
:
Now that the military balance overwhelmingly favor Beijing over Taipei, a not insignificant number of their officers, who would rather be Chinese than embrace the notion of a Taiwanese national identity as advocated by pan-Green forces have chosen to
and/or
Beijing.
View attachment 155522
From the perspective of Taiwanese separatist forces like the DPP, it is more
politically palatable to frame this situation as incompetence than as a lack of support for their separatist agenda.
From the perspective of the CPC and PLA: they are compatriots who've seen the light. Moreover,
:
Obviously not all of them are spying for Beijing, but for each and every one that got caught, how many went unnoticed or otherwise got away?
Let that sink in for a minute, and that should give you an idea on approximately what percentage of their forces will actually lay their lives down should Beijing pursue a military solution with regard to the Taiwan issue.
As for the lack of training: conscripts generally speaking get an inadequate amount of training regardless of the military they serve in.
Moreover this isn't something that can be fixed with money or technology.
Conscription hasn't been popular on the island of Taiwan, and as a result, IIRC, it's currently limited to one year of service: that's just not enough time to produce a competent soldier, sailor or airman