Taiwan Restores Anti-Communist Classes After 25 Years
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- Taiwan's defence ministry announced on July 5 it had restored formal 'anti-communist patriotic education' for military academy graduates, ending a 25-year hiatus — the original program was renamed 'patriotic education' in 2002 and has now been reinstated amid rising Chinese threats.
- The restored curriculum will feature lectures from the Mainland Affairs Council, the National Security Council, the Ministry of Justice, and the Academia Sinica think tank, designed to help graduates 'clearly understand national security threats' and 'why we fight, and for whom we fight.'
- Joseph Wu, secretary-general of Taiwan's National Security Council, posted on July 4 that as of July 3 Taiwan was tracking a record of more than 110 Chinese military and Coast Guard ships along the First Island Chain, calling it 'a clear sign of [China's] expansionism.'
- China's Coast Guard launched a new patrol off Taiwan's east coast on July 4, prompting Taipei to reject Beijing's jurisdiction in those waters and reaffirm that it does not accept Beijing's sovereignty claims over the island.
- China's defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment, though Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control, and Chinese military activity around the island has become near-daily.
Why it matters: The revival of explicitly 'anti-communist' framing — retired for a quarter-century — marks a symbolic hardening of Taiwan's military identity at a moment when Chinese naval and Coast Guard presence around the island has hit a record 110-plus vessels. For Taiwan's officer corps, the curriculum shift reframes the threat as ideological as well as military, aligning wartime mindset-building with an unprecedented scale of daily PLA and Coast Guard activity that Beijing shows no sign of scaling back.
