踢正步

choi

Joyu Wang, Lock-Kneed Soldiers Kick Up a Fuss; Taiwan veterans fight to keep goose-stepping. Wall Street Journal, Jan 11, 2025, at page A1.
https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/t ... -tradition-6e782a5a

Note:
(a) Joyu Wang 王若羽 is female and based in Taiwan.
(b) "Defense Minister Wellington Koo, who took over the post in May, has called a halt to the tradition [of goose-stepping].  * * * retired Army Lt. Gen. Lo Chi-chin, the 69-year-old head of the alumni association for Taiwan's Army officer training school, Whampoa Military Academy. * * * In the West, the goose step—evoking Hitler and Mussolini, dictators stomping on Europe and Africa—has been ridiculed if not abandoned."
(i) This Wellington Koo 顧立雄 (1958- ; JD from New York University after 台湾大学法学士 (which takes four year to earn, after high school)) is different from another Wellington Koo 顧維鈞 (1888 – 1985)
(ii) Lo Chi-chin  陸軍官校校友總會理事長 羅際琴 (1954- ; male)
(A) Taiwan has four ranks for a military general: 一級上將, 二級上將, 中將 and 少將 (the rank 准將 never existed in ROC army).
(B) general officers in the United States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge ... n_the_United_States
(introduction: General officer ranks currently used in the uniformed services are:
One-star: brigadier general
Two-star: major general
Three-star: lieutenant general
Four-star: general)
(iii) military step
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_step
(section 2 Marching types and commands: quick march and slow march)

Both US and British have both marches. See March Past In Slow And Quick Time (Trooping the Colour: Colonels Review 2023). YouTube, uploaded by Military Events a tear ago.
(A) At 9:48 (9 minutes and 48 seconds), the same regiment switched from slow march to quick march.
(B) Trooping the Colour
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trooping_the_Colour
("Historically, colours were once used on the battlefield as a rallying point")
(C) English dictionary:
* troop (v): "[I(ntrasitive)  usually * * * ] to walk somewhere in a large group, usually with one person behind another"  (brackets original)
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/troop


(c)
"In Taiwan, the goose step’s official swan song came last June. In the southern port city of Kaohsiung [where 陸軍軍官學校 is located] * * * The Latin American guests appeared to outdo their hosts by lifting their straight legs past perpendicular. * * * 'Goose-stepping is just to demonstrate the military's discipline,' said Rex Chou pI am uncertain of his Chinese name], a 60-year-old veteran who took part in the June march. * * * 'Let's be real. Goose-stepping is not going to get a military ready for real battle,' said retired Maj. Gen. Yu Pei-chen, a former instructor at Whampoa and now a city councilor. * * * 'Goose-stepping isn't a good way to train—it's too easy to end up with lower limb injuries, especially stress fractures,' said Lin Hsin-chin [林杏青 (male)], a sports medicine doctor * * * Military historians trace the origin of goose-stepping to the Prussian army in the 18th century * * * Goose-stepping eventually marched via Germany and Japan into the repertoire of Chinese warlords, and onward into the Republic of China's Nationalist Army, according to Taipei-based military historian Chen Yu-shen. * * * In 2003, under Democratic Progressive Party President Chen Shui-bian, goose-stepping was officially dropped from military training. Cadets learned instead to simply march in unison.   But the goose step wasn't completely stamped out. In the years that followed, the practice had its ups and downs. In 2016, Ho Chi-sheng [何啟聖 (國民黨籍)] pulled together about 500 veterans in a goose-step parade in front of the office of the newly inaugurated DPP president [蔡英文]."
(i) "Yu Peichen"

The en.wikipedia.org spells Yu Beichen 于北辰. The zh.wikipedia.org does not have his English name but states, "中華民國陸軍少将（退役），現任桃園市議會議員。"
(ii)  
(A) 正步
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/正步
("德國 [precisely 普魯士] 作為正步的發源地 * * * [in China:] 正步起始于淮军，当时称 '鸭步'。袁世凯小站练兵以德国操法编练新军，单兵基本教练制式课目中包括了 '慢步' 与 '正步' 两种。 * * * 在民國92年（2003年）4月在中華民國總統府軍事會議之中，時任中華民國總統兼三軍統帥陳水扁核定廢止中華民國國軍部隊「踢正步」")
(B) Why the discrepancy? Chen Sui0bian or Welling Koo abolished goose stepping of ROC military?

from the Web: "陳水扁 * * *正式取消踢正步訓練，只保留三軍儀隊依軍禮需求使用正步。   但蔡英文執政後，重用的「兩皮將軍」（只管頭皮和草皮）邱國正，宣稱他要重振軍威，陸官恢復踢正步訓練，於百年校慶 [established June 16, 1924] 時展現訓練成果。 * * * 新任國防部長顧立雄 [starting in May 2024] 正式宣布，取消前部隊踢正步，引發國軍守舊派的老軍頭不滿。"
(iii) Chen Yu-shen  陳佑慎 (政治大學歷史學系博士)
-------------------------
TAIPEI, Taiwan—Once a month, under a highway overpass near military headquarters in Taipei, a small group of Taiwan army veterans band together in a coordinated act of defiance.

Lined up in a row, wooden dummy rifles on their shoulders, they move slowly in unison in a goose step, the now-taboo lock-kneed marching style their army adopted on the Chinese mainland nearly 100 years ago.

In their youth, the goose-steppers of Taiwan weren’t cooped up. For much of the history of the Republic of China, from the army’s founding to its midcentury flight to the island onward through decades of martial law, the practice was a feature of military training and national ceremony.

Defense Minister Wellington Koo, who took over the post in May, has called a halt to the tradition. As Taiwan tries to build up its military to defend the island against the threat of invasion by China, Koo says the foot-stomping marching style is outdated and has no benefit in modern warfare. Also on Koo’s blacklist: bayonet drills.

The army’s old guard is kicking back.

“This is an extremely, extremely, extremely bad decision,” said said retired Army Lt. Gen. Lo Chi-chin, the 69-year-old head of the alumni association for Taiwan’s Army officer training school, Whampoa Military Academy.

Goose-stepping embodies the academy’s spirit and the rigor of its training, said Lo. “If you’re on a battlefield,” he said, “and one person tells you to move left, another tells you to move right, and someone else says to stay put, how do you think you’d handle that battle?”

In the West, the goose step—evoking Hitler and Mussolini, dictators stomping on Europe and Africa—has been ridiculed if not abandoned. But it remains a staple in parts of South America and Asia, including in a Chinese honor guard’s daily flag-raising ceremony at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. A prominent practitioner is North Korea, a dictatorship where massive synchronized parades are intended to display unity, discipline and strength.

In Taiwan, the goose step’s official swan song came last June. In the southern port city of Kaohsiung, goose-stepping veterans joined young cadets for the centennial of the Whampoa academy.

The multigenerational formation, with guest troops from Guatemala and Paraguay, marched before Taiwan President Lai Ching-te and other dignitaries, including Koo, who had already declared the parade to be goose-stepping’s last.

The Latin American guests appeared to outdo their hosts by lifting their straight legs past perpendicular. But what Taiwan’s contingent lacked in flexibility it made up for in panache: a zealous, white-gloved swinging of the arms and a slower, lower stop-motion kick, stomping down loudly with a bang.

“Goose-stepping is just to demonstrate the military’s discipline,” said Rex Chou, a 60-year-old veteran who took part in the June march. “It has nothing to do with the word ‘authoritarianism.’ ”

Marchers require long hours of training to get mentally and physically in sync, said Chou, a regular at the Taipei weekend drills. Also vital, he said: Arm, leg and core strength.

Opponents of the practice say it simply has no use today.

“Let’s be real. Goose-stepping is not going to get a military ready for real battle,” said retired Maj. Gen. Yu Pei-chen, a former instructor at Whampoa and now a city councilor. “Why not use this time for combat training instead?”  

Some physicians say goose-stepping can be harmful to the health of an army that depends heavily on infantry soldiers.

“Goose-stepping isn’t a good way to train—it’s too easy to end up with lower limb injuries, especially stress fractures,” said Lin Hsin-chin, a sports medicine doctor who prefers to take part in the martial art of jiu jitsu.

Military historians trace the origin of goose-stepping to the Prussian army in the 18th century—an era when synchronized advance had strategic purpose and built stamina for the battlefield. Goose-stepping eventually marched via Germany and Japan into the repertoire of Chinese warlords, and onward into the Republic of China’s Nationalist Army, according to Taipei-based military historian Chen Yu-shen.





For author George Orwell, the practice was “an affirmation of naked power.” The goose-step, he wrote in 1941, “is one of the most horrible sights in the world, far more terrifying than a dive-bomber.”


Echoes of autocracy strike a nerve in Taiwan, a democracy that survives in defiance of its large authoritarian neighbor, which claims the island as its own.

Hong Kong has moved in the opposite direction. As democratic freedoms withered under the thumb of Beijing, the police force in the territory began several years ago to adopt the goose-stepping style practiced on the Chinese mainland, abandoning the bent-kneed marching drills of the British colonial era.

For some Taiwanese, goose-stepping evokes the era of martial law that held sway over the island for nearly four decades under Chiang Kai-shek and his political party, the Kuomintang, or KMT.

In 2003, under Democratic Progressive Party President Chen Shui-bian, goose-stepping was officially dropped from military training. Cadets learned instead to simply march in unison.

But the goose step wasn’t completely stamped out. In the years that followed, the practice had its ups and downs. In 2016, Ho Chi-sheng pulled together about 500 veterans in a goose-step parade in front of the office of the newly inaugurated DPP president. The demonstration, he said, was sparked by a video circulating on social media showing cadets marching sloppily.

Ho wanted to create a display recalling Taiwan’s big National Day military parades of the 1980s. “This was the feeling of glory—our moment to shine,” the military veteran, now a human-resources manager, said.

In 2023, Koo’s predecessor Chiu Kuo-cheng, a Whampoa alum, brought goose-stepping veterans back into the academy’s annual parade.

It wasn’t unexpected that Koo, the first civilian to head the Defense Ministry in over a decade, would once again give goose steppers the boot. A former lawyer, Koo once led a government body responsible for addressing the injustices of the KMT’s authoritarian past.

Shortly after taking the defense post, Koo told lawmakers that if “it doesn’t align with the core purpose of combat training, we’ll get rid of it.”

For Fan Tien-pei, a 60-year-old Whampoa alum who often leads training sessions under the Taipei overpass, synchronized goose-stepping and bayonet drills are the route to physical and mental fitness.

“Without this kind of display,” said Fan, “you just can’t picture a unit being ready for battle.”

“ ‘That’s so dumb,’ ” former cadet Chen Yuan-te, 26, said a comrade once told him about goose-stepping. Chen is too young to have learned the march, but said he’d probably feel it was silly, too, if he had to do it.