Wu Shih-wen

Wu Shih-wen (Chinese: 伍世文; pinyin: Wu Shìwén) was the Minister of National Defense of the Republic of China from 2000 to 2002. He was a career military officer, joining the Taiwanese Navy first as a conscript sailor in 1951, then as an Artillery Lieutenant in the Taiwanese Army in 1955, and later entering the Army Aviation Corps as a helicopter pilot in 1963. He was one of the first Taiwanese military pilots to qualify on and fly the Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter. He was born into a military family, as his father was a senior Naval officer in the Kuomintang Navy and retired as a Fleet Admiral in 1959. He was the Commander of the 21 Artillery Regiment between 1978 and 1981, and then commander of the 602 Air Cavalry Brigade between 1981 and 1985. Between 1985 and 1989 he was the rector of the Army Artillery School, as well as the main Intelligence Liaision Officer to Argentina and Israel. He was promoted to Commander of the Aviation and Special Forces Command in 1989, and as Commander of the 6th Army Corps in 1993.
He became the Chief Commander of the Army in 1996, Chief of General Staff in 1998 and the Defense Minister in 2000. He was considered to be a military and foreign policy hawk, who resisted military reforms and rapprochement with the People's Republic of China. During the Third Taiwan Straits Crisis he was suspected of ordering Amphibious Marines & Coastal Artillery units to stage live fire drills as a response to the PLA Navy's muscle flexing (and in defiance of the government's and the United States' wish for deescalation).