Taiwan says it is reinstituting “anti-communist patriotic education” at its military academy after almost a quarter century as China continues to escalate naval activity around the island.
The defence ministry said it was reviving the classes this year in the face of increasing military and infiltration threats from China.
The island introduced “anti-communist patriotic education” at the military academy in 1965 but ended the programme in 2002, renaming it to “patriotic education”.
The reinstituted classes are intended to warn cadets against the danger of “communist bandits”, the defence ministry said. They will help graduating officers understand Taiwan’s cross-strait policy, the threat posed by China, cognitive warfare, infiltration and recruitment operations, and authoritarian expansion.
"It is necessary for them to clearly understand national security threats and recognise the military mission of 'why we fight and for whom we fight,’” the ministry said.
Taiwanese officials also pointed to infiltration and espionage threats from China as a key reason for resuming the programme.
The defence ministry said it was roping in officials from its Mainland Affairs Council, National Security Council, Ministry of Justice, Investigation Bureau, and Military Intelligence Bureau as well as scholars from Academia Sinica to help impart “anti-communist patriotic education” to military cadets.
China regards self-governed Taiwan as a breakaway territory and does not rule out the use of force to reunify it with the mainland.
In recent years, Beijing has escalated military and diplomatic pressure on Taipei, including through the use of “grey zone tactics”.
Taipei rejects China’s claims of sovereign over the island. In May, president Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing calls a “separatist leader”, insisted that the island was a sovereign and democratic country that neither belonged to nor was subordinate to China.
The Chinese military now operates almost daily in the waters and airspace around Taiwan. More than 110 Chinese naval and coast guard vessels sailed up and down the First Island Chain last Friday alone, according to Joseph Wu, secretary general of Taiwan's National Security Council.
"China's massive maritime mobilisation along the First Island Chain is a clear sign of its expansionism," Mr Wu said, referring to an area stretching from Japan to Taiwan, the Philippines and Borneo.
