Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Hsu Chiao-hsin/Facebook
KMT LEGISLATOR HSU CHIAO-HSIN recently sought to remove provisions of the Civil Defense Act, as part of an attempt to undercut efforts to defend Taiwan in wartime.
The changes pushed for by Hsu would exclude military operations from the scope of the Civil Defense Act. In this sense, Hsu has been criticized as seeking to gut the bill.
Namely, the Lai administration currently aims to train 400,000 to be part of a civil defense force. 270,000 would serve as reservists, 40,000 as firefighters, and 70,000 serving as part of disaster relief or volunteer police groups.
To much surprise, the KMT itself did not back Hsu’s version of the bill. Instead, Lin Tzu-ming, the KMT caucus whip stated moments before voting was to take place that the KMT has no objection to the DPP’s bill.
This caused confusion in the legislature, the end result being that the TPP ended up voting in favor of Hsu’s version of the bill while the KMT did not. It is expected that the KMT will bring up the matter another time, however, and that the delay was a tactic to draw further attention to the issue.
Hsu has framed the issue as intended to protect children from being sent to battlefields in the event of a war. However, the Lai administration has responded that this was never the intention and would not occur through civil defense efforts.
The KMT has increasingly sought to frame the issue of defense for Taiwan as endangering students and children. This proves ironic for a party that once instituted military training in schools across Taiwan during the authoritarian period, to build up for efforts to retake China.
Photo credit: Hsu Chiao-hsin/Facebook
To this extent, the KMT has sometimes seen fit to frame the DPP government as violating international law as part of efforts regarding defense. This recent matter has been no different. For example, with US weapons manufacturer RTX criticized for price inflation and investigated by the US government, the KMT framed this as Taiwan being implicated in international fraud.
Likewise, the KMT framed efforts by the Tsai administration to purchase Volcano landmines from the US as violating international human rights conventions on the use of anti-personnel landmines. This occurred though the Tsai administration wished to purchase anti-tank landmines that were visible to the naked eye.
Hsu herself has attempted to sow doubt in defense and diplomacy many times. Earlier this year, Hsu accused Taiwanese aid to Ukraine in collaboration with Czechia and Ukraine of being a form of political kickback. This continued the pattern in which the KMT aims to try and undercut the Tsai administration’s successes in strengthening political ties with other countries by suggesting that this has only occurred through political corruption, with the Tsai administration paying off foreign politicians.
Hsu previously alleged that the veterans’ assistance organization Spirit of America was an organization that sowed warfare wherever it went, drawing on conspiratorial claims from US fringe influencers amplified by the pan-Blue camp that the Biden administration has a secret plan to destroy Taiwan.
This proves no different with recent efforts by Hsu to undercut civil defense. Similarly, the KMT has sought to block the national budget on repeated occasions, inclusive of the defense budget. The KMT has in this timeframe also taken aim at Taiwan’s domestic submarine program, particularly since the Lai and Tsai administrations have sought to drum up domestic pride in defense with regards to the program. The KMT has framed the submarine as a potential death trap for sailors, while also dismissing its utility in defending Taiwan, and asserting that the submarine program is overly expensive.
In this sense, even if Hsu’s bill has been tabled for now, one expects similar proposals to recur down the line. This proves illustrative of where the political stances of the KMT are at present.