Taipei: Facing an unrelenting military threat from across the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan has long required all qualified male citizens to perform compulsory military service once they hit the age of 18. That has normally involved basic military training, but since the early 2000s, conscripts have had the option of fulfilling their obligation through alternative forms of service, including in diplomatic roles in overseas technical and medical missions.

According to Focus Taiwan, a total of 1,726 individuals have served in the diplomatic service program, mostly in countries with which Taiwan has formal diplomatic relations, according to TaiwanICDF, the semi-official organization responsible for international development aid and the program's implementation. The program will soon be coming to an end, however, as the government has scaled back the alternative service program to boost Taiwan's self-defense capabilities and eliminate potential loopholes for draft dodgers.

Many of those who did their compulsory service abroad on diplomatic missions were sorry to see that the program they felt was rewarding is coming to an end. One of them is Chang Keng-hua, who served as a diplomatic service conscript in Sao Tome and Principe from 2004 to early 2006, when the West African island state was still a diplomatic ally. A graduate of Yilan-based National Ilan University's Horticulture Department, Chang told CNA that he wanted to perform his compulsory service by doing something related to his expertise.

Chang remembered vividly that he and a group of TaiwanICDF workers first arrived in a remote rural area of Sao Tome and Principe at night. There was no light at all, so they kept their car headlights on as the only source of lighting while trying to convince the locals that they were there to help them grow higher-quality vegetables. "Locals told us that we were the first group of foreigners ever to visit that area," Chang said. They were looking forward to Taiwan's help and hoped for our return soon, he added.

In fact, the joy and sense of fulfillment was so strong that immediately after he finished his year of service in Africa, Chang later officially joined TaiwanICDF and made international assistance his life-long pursuit. As a full-time employee, he was sent to Guatemala, one of Taiwan's allies in Central America, where he assisted local farmers with their marketing efforts. During weekends, meanwhile, he helped out at church-funded schools for underprivileged students, offering them free gardening classes, and together they built some small "happy farms."

That sense of accomplishment while performing diplomatic service has been shared by current recruit Hung Chin-yi. Hung began his service in November 2025 in Paraguay -- Taiwan's only diplomatic ally in South America -- where he is responsible for the Health Information System (HIS) Taiwan built there. Hung, who received a master's degree from the Taipei-based National Chengchi University's Department of Management Information Systems, told CNA he was more than happy to be able to put his knowledge into practice in the allied country.

According to TaiwanICDF, among its current 151 male employees, 65, or 43 percent of them, were former diplomatic service recruits. Asked to comment on what TaiwanICDF would do to make up for the impeding phasing out of alternative service, Peifen Hsieh, deputy head of TaiwanICDF, told CNA currently about one-third to nearly half of all members of Taiwan's technical/agricultural missions overseas are made up of conscripts. In response, TaiwanICDF is expecting to expand its existing overseas volunteer programs to fill the gap, she added.