A majority of Taiwanese are likely to resist an invasion by China, according to research published this month by a senior U.S. Air Force officer.
Captain Jimmy Chien, the Taiwan-PRC director for the Secretary of the Air Force, International Affairs, said roughly seven in 10 men of military age in Taiwan would be willing to take up arms.
"Based on my conversations, I estimate that roughly 70 percent would stay to
fight against a Chinese invasion, 20 percent would leave Taiwan, and 10 percent would surrender," Chien wrote in his analysis for the Global Taiwan Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
China claims Taiwan as part of its territory, although the Chinese Communist Party has never governed the self-administered island in its seven decades in power.
Assessing the preparedness for war among the Taiwanese population has been subject to much discussion in recent years. Some new surveys have tried to answer the difficult question by conducting public opinion polling.
Chien spoke to Taiwanese from different demographics to get a sense of preparedness for a war-like scenario. Chien used an ethnographic approach to survey their views on being prepared for the war.
During the survey, Chien identified two elements to improve domestic self-defense confidence among the broader masses. "From their perspective, this is contingent on two things: proper training and U.S. support," he said.
Most of the people Chien spoke to found the existing military training inadequate, but they were willing to fight if properly prepared, he observed.
"Most military-age men I spoke with stated that they would fight to the end, but only if they had been provided with the necessary training and tools to make an attempt at a decent defense, and perhaps even a survivable one," Chien said.
Taiwanese nationals described a lack of scenario-based training, with current regimens focused on administrative tasks such as "cleaning, painting buildings, and mowing the grass" rather than actual combat training.
The results of Chien's survey are echoed by a similar study in the past by Taiwan's Institute of National Defense and Security Research, which said in a March 2022 report that 73 percent of Taiwanese would resist a forceful takeover.
Taiwan's military training has come into sharp focus in the last few years as Beijing's coercive tactics across the strait have made the prospect of conflict a realistic possibility.
Taiwan's ability to defend itself will depend on political leadership and social cohesion, which were ranked as two of the four primary variables that would determine its people's ability to defend themselves, according to a recent report by the RAND Corporation think tank.
"Given these trends, Taiwan's ability to withstand a major attack by China for the posited 90-day period increasingly will hinge on the strength of its political leadership and social cohesion above all other variables," said the Rand report.
In August, the U.S. approved $80 million in support for Taiwan under the Foreign Military Financing program, usually reserved for countries with which Washington has official ties. Though an insignificant amount as compared to past multimillion-dollar arms sales to Taiwan, the transfer of weapons through the special FMF program signals a resolve to prepare the island for future conflict with the mainland.
The U.S. is now stepping up the training for military personnel, expanding its focus on merely supplying the weapons to Taiwan. Providing tangible training to Taiwanese troops along the lines of what the U.S. has extended to the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces may be part of the next strategy to prepare the island's population.
"Taiwan is preparing to send two battalions of ground troops to the U.S. for training, the first time this has happened since the 1970s," Wang Ting-yu, Taiwan's ruling party legislator, told the BBC in a recent interview.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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