As Japan weathers pressure from China after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said last month that an attack on Taiwan would constitute a ‘survival-threatening situation’, Taiwan’s own opposition parties risk undermining that support.
Two weeks after Takaichi’s comments, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te proposed a T$1.25 trillion (US$40 billion), eight-year supplemental package that would raise defence spending to 3.3 percent of GDP. The money would accelerate the military’s transition towards a porcupine force centred on small, mobile and easily hidden equipment.
Yet opposition lawmakers blocked the plan. Cheng Li-wun, who was elected leader of Taiwan’s largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), in October, dismissed the proposal as ‘too high and too fast’.
This is despite the plan leaving out the large, expensive equipment that the opposition has long said would provoke China. The KMT had previously pledged to support higher defence spending.
Cheng’s position is at odds with the support Taiwan is receiving from its democratic friends. Takaichi’s comments are only the latest example of regional support for Taiwan, which has been increasing this decade. Former US president Joe Biden repeatedly vowed to defend Taiwan, while Donald Trump has said that China would not attack Taiwan during his tenure since it ‘knows the consequences.’
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