Taiwan plans to increase military budget to deal with Chinese pressure

The proposal unveiled Thursday by Taiwan’s cabinet calls for an allocation equivalent to about $8.7 billion over the next five years to acquire domestic precision missiles, high-performance naval ships and weapons systems for existing warships.

The new spending will be on top of Taiwan’s annual military-related budget, which will increase by 4% to a record $15.1 billion in 2022.

General Chen Huang-rong, deputy head of strategic planning at Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense, said at a news conference, “To face serious threats from the enemy, our military urgently needs to acquire mature weapons capable of mass production. Is.” Thursday.

The ruling Communist Party of China considers Taiwan as part of its territory. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has vowed to take control of the democratically self-governing island by force if necessary. China’s People’s Liberation Army has intensified its presence and operations around the island over the past year, amid rising nationalist sentiment on the mainland and greater concerns about strengthening ties between Taipei and Washington.

According to a Wall Street Journal tally of figures released by Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense, the PLA Air Force flew 19 warplanes into Taiwan’s air-defense detection area on Sunday, the largest air force air force offensive against the island in more than two months. is performance. The PLA has flown more than 600 planes to Taiwan in the past year, including about 450 since January.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said on Wednesday that recent actions by the PLA were not aimed at “Taiwan compatriots” but were instead targeting “external forces and Taiwan’s independence separatist activities”.

Some US and Taiwanese military analysts have criticized the island for spending too little on defence, and for spending money on lucrative purchases such as the F-16 fighter jet rather than less attractive weapon systems that allow Taiwan to wage asymmetric warfare. will enable it better. Better strength of PLA

The new five-year spending plan aims to address some of those grievances and make Taiwan’s military more self-reliant. It prioritizes the cultivation of domestically developed military technology, including antiship missiles, combat drones, and field and ground-based air-defense systems.

“We are increasing the budget not to provoke war, but to ask Beijing not to start a war,” said Tsai Shih-ying, a lawmaker with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party. Mr. Tsai said the new budget was a showcase for America. And Japan’s Taiwan is determined to defend itself.

Nevertheless, he acknowledged the reduction in Taiwan’s defense spending in view of the growing military imbalance with China.

China said in March that it would increase military spending by 6.8% to $208 billion for 2021—more than 13 times the size of Taiwan’s regular military budget.

The special military budget is expected to be approved in the legislature, where the ruling party commands a majority.

Ma Wen-chun, a legislator from the opposition Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, said that while his party supports increased military spending, additional money should be spent on ready-to-use weapons that can meet immediate needs. Some of the items included in the special bill, such as the domestically built Tuo Chiang-class warships, are still under production.

Analysts say increasing military spending is politically difficult for Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, who needs to strike a balance between national security and social welfare, especially with the pandemic’s weight on the island’s economy.

Su Tzu-eun, a research fellow at the National Defense and Security Research Institute in Taipei, a military-backed think tank, described the special budget as an effort to increase the island’s security without cutting back on routine spending on non-defense items.

Taiwan’s Air Force plans to spend more than $1.7 billion over the next six years to buy long-range precision-strike munitions for its F-16 jets, according to the regular budget released last month. While an additional $780 million has been set up to develop. drone system.

More than $3.1 billion was allocated to the budget for the purchase of 100 Harpoon missiles announced as part of a US arms deal last year, as well as 1.6 billion to upgrade Taiwan’s Navy’s La Fayette-class frigates. dollars were allocated.

Taiwan’s military has been conducting annual live-fire exercises, simulating attacks by the Chinese military.

Dozens of military enthusiasts, families and television journalists gathered near a pineapple farm in southern Taiwan’s Pingtung County early Wednesday as fighter jets—including locally made indigenous defense fighters—take off and land on a provincial highway Which was the first time in the history of the army.

President Tsai, who oversaw the exercise, later wrote on social media, using the formal name of Taiwan, that the exercises “showed the confidence of the Republic of China Air Force to defend our airspace!”