Taiwan wants to prove that it is serious about defence
THE LESSON drawn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is obvious to Taiwanese officials: if you want the world to help in your struggle against an overbearing neighbour, you must first fight back fiercely yourselves. Taiwan’s outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, has long seemed to understand as much. She has overhauled the island’s approach to defence since coming to office in 2016.
Back then, Taiwan’s defence spending had stagnated for nearly two decades and conscription was only four months long. By contrast China’s defence budget had grown by about 10% every year from 2000 to 2016. It had developed missiles capable of striking American bases in Guam. By 2020 its navy was the largest in the world. Even so, Taiwan’s defence strategy involved preparing to take on China directly. No longer.
In a sign of closer alignment with American officials, Taiwan is moving towards an “asymmetric” strategy that uses many mobile, smaller and cheaper weapons to target China’s weak points in case of invasion. Ms Tsai also extended conscription, reformed training and raised defence spending from 1.8% of GDP in 2016 to a record 2.5% in 2024. (In absolute terms this is $19bn, equivalent to about a third of Japan’s defence spending and less than a tenth of China’s.) The government also invested in the domestic production of drones, jets, missiles and submarines. It raised soldiers’ wages to improve morale and increased training with America.
Lai Ching-te, Ms Tsai’s successor, has promised to continue her policies. But he will face new difficulties. His party has lost the majority it held in parliament through Ms Tsai’s two terms. And China’s use of “grey-zone” tactics—aggression and harassment below the threshold of war—looks likely to ramp up, in order to divide Taiwan’s society and erode its sovereignty over his term. Mr Lai’s inauguration on May 20th is already attracting unwanted Chinese attention.
The line between countering harassment and provoking war is treacherously thin. Mr Lai needs to rally Taiwan’s people to prepare for their own defence without guarantees of any international support. And he will have to do this while Taiwan’s most important partner, America, goes through a volatile election of its own.
Mr Lai is keeping most of Ms Tsai’s security officials. His defence minister will be Wellington Koo, who led Taiwan’s National Security Council for the past four years. The next defence budget will probably prioritise items for coastal defence such as anti-ship missiles and small, fast patrol ships, says Su Tzu-yun of the Institute for National Defence and Security Research (INDSR), a Taiwanese think-tank.
Taiwan’s defence officials were sceptical of asymmetric warfare but have come around since the war in Ukraine—though they argue that they still need bigger planes and ships to combat China’s grey-zone harassment. Mr Koo is a lawyer rather than a military type. This suggests that Mr Lai aims to change the “political culture” of Taiwan’s armed forces, says Mr Su.
A major problem for Mr Lai will be domestic disunity. Both of Taiwan’s opposition parties said during the presidential campaign that they would raise defence spending to 3% of GDP. Polling shows nearly 60% of the public support that increase. But some legislators from the main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), are causing trouble. One lawmaker is being sued by Taiwan’s foreign ministry for leaking classified plans about Taiwan providing aid to Ukraine through the Czech Republic. Another KMT legislator, Ma Wen-chun, has pressured the Tsai administration to visit Taiping, a disputed island controlled by Taiwan in the South China Sea. That is in spite of the foreign minister declaring that Taiwan should avoid “creating more difficulties” in the region. Ms Ma was due to lead a delegation of opposition legislators to Taiping on May 18th.
The KMT as a whole could be another headache for Mr Lai as China is eager to work with the party, circumventing Taiwan’s government. In late April KMT legislators travelled to China and met the Communist Party’s top officials working on Taiwan. Opposition politicians and media also criticise the ruling party for being too deferential to its “American daddy” and suggest that dialogue with China would make Taiwan safer.
These divisions will be especially troublesome if Donald Trump is elected in November. A recent study by researchers at INDSR found that Taiwanese people’s willingness to fight and confidence in their own armed forces both correlate with perceptions of American support.
America has no binding commitment to defend Taiwan, but President Joe Biden has said four times that he would do so if China attacked. By contrast Mr Trump, when asked what he would do, made accusations that Taiwan took chipmaking jobs away from America. The Lai administration will keep trying to prove that Taiwan is ready to fight. But it will have a harder time reassuring Taiwan’s people that they will not be fighting alone. ■