China will spend an extra 12.6 percent on its armed forces this year, the government announced on Friday, adding to Washington's fear that the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait is tilting toward Beijing.
The sharpest rise for three years, it will give political ammunition to US Congress members who have threatened a trade war with the EU if Brussels goes ahead with its plan to lift its arms embargo on China later this year.
The National People's Congress is expected to approve a military budget of 247.7 billion yuan (US$29.9 billion) at its annual meeting, when security issues are unusually high on the agenda. The nearly 3,000 members will also debate a law threatening Taiwan with punitive action, including, ultimately, a military attack, if it pushes for independence.
This is nothing new, but China is increasingly capable of backing its words with action.
With its 2.5 million soldiers, the People's Liberation Army is the world's biggest armed force.
But in recent years the government has tried to put more emphasis on technology than manpower.
Pensioning off hundreds of thousands of personnel and buying new equipment has been expensive.
For the past decade the defense budget has been growing by double figures, outstripping even the super-charged economy.
This is a source of increasing alarm in the US, which is committed to defending Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province and its main military target.
Last month CIA Director Porter Goss said that the strategic balance in the Strait was shifting toward China.
Last year, he said, Beijing increased the number of missiles stationed opposite Taiwan, deployed several new attack submarines, and began building 23 amphibious landing vessels.
Senior US officials are once again publicly treating China as a strategic competitor.
Since the beginning of the year, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has expressed concern about the expansion of the Chinese navy
And the US and Japan have broken with diplomatic niceties for the first time by mentioning Taiwan as a shared concern in the latest review of their security alliance.
Moreover, the increasing global importance of China's armed forces lies behind US anger at the EU proposal to lift the arms embargo it imposed on China after the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in favour of democracy in 1989.
Although the EU has promised a strict code of conduct to minimize the impact of the change, Washington is afraid that the EU will allow sales of advanced communications and electronic equipment that could strengthen China's ability to take Taiwan by force.
Members of the US Congress said last week that they might retaliate by restricting European access to US military technology.
China's response has been to play down the threat posed by its army.
Jiang Enzhu, the spokesman for the National People's Congress, insisted that, compared with other big countries, China spent a "very low" proportion of its economic output on the military.
But Beijing's determination to recover Taiwan, if necessary by force, is certain to be given legal force by the adoption of an anti-secession law during this year's congress.
Although China insists that the proposed legislation will not undermine recent improvements in relations with Taiwan, many people on the island are afraid that these legal and military moves are in a dangerous direction.
"There is growing concern in Taiwan and the US that the balance is tilting," said Arthur Ding (
"With a growing economy, China is more able to afford advanced weapons systems. In the long term, things are moving their way," he said.
Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on April 9 said that the first group of Indian workers could arrive as early as this year as part of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India and the India Taipei Association. Signed in February 2024, the MOU stipulates that Taipei would decide the number of migrant workers and which industries would employ them, while New Delhi would manage recruitment and training. Employment would be governed by the laws of both countries. Months after its signing, the two sides agreed that 1,000 migrant workers from India would
In recent weeks, Taiwan has witnessed a surge of public anxiety over the possible introduction of Indian migrant workers. What began as a policy signal from the Ministry of Labor quickly escalated into a broader controversy. Petitions gathered thousands of signatures within days, political figures issued strong warnings, and social media became saturated with concerns about public safety and social stability. At first glance, this appears to be a straightforward policy question: Should Taiwan introduce Indian migrant workers or not? However, this framing is misleading. The current debate is not fundamentally about India. It is about Taiwan’s labor system, its
Japan’s imminent easing of arms export rules has sparked strong interest from Warsaw to Manila, Reuters reporting found, as US President Donald Trump wavers on security commitments to allies, and the wars in Iran and Ukraine strain US weapons supplies. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s ruling party approved the changes this week as she tries to invigorate the pacifist country’s military industrial base. Her government would formally adopt the new rules as soon as this month, three Japanese government officials told Reuters. Despite largely isolating itself from global arms markets since World War II, Japan spends enough on its own
On March 31, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs released declassified diplomatic records from 1995 that drew wide domestic media attention. One revelation stood out: North Korea had once raised the possibility of diplomatic relations with Taiwan. In a meeting with visiting Chinese officials in May 1995, as then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) prepared for a visit to South Korea, North Korean officials objected to Beijing’s growing ties with Seoul and raised Taiwan directly. According to the newly released records, North Korean officials asked why Pyongyang should refrain from developing relations with Taiwan while China and South Korea were expanding high-level
RSS