The US has suggested that Taiwan raise its defense budget to 3.5 percent of its GDP to prevent the cross-strait military balance from tilting further in favor of China, a Japanese economic daily reported yesterday.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun quoted unidentified sources familiar with Taiwan-US military exchanges as saying that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had conveyed the message to senior Taiwanese military officers during a meeting in the US this summer.
Quoting data collected by the CIA, the newspaper said in a Washington-datelined dispatch that Taiwan's military spending last year accounted for about 2.6 percent of its GDP, far lower than China's ratio of 4.3 percent.
The US defense spending ratio is about 3.5 percent of its GDP, the daily said.
REPEATED PLEA
The daily said the US has on many occasions pushed Taipei to accelerate its military modernization, but added that it is unusual for Washington to actually suggest a concrete figure by which it thinks Taiwan should increase its defense spending.
This, the paper claimed, mainly reflects rising US concern about the growing imbalance in military strength on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
DEADLOCKED BILL
To meet Taiwan's defense needs, the US agreed in 2001 to sell a package of weapons to Taipei, including eight diesel-electric submarines, three Patriot PAC III anti-missile batteries and a squadron of 12 P-3C marine-patrol aircraft.
The arms deal, however, has been stuck in the legislature. The latest version of the arms bill calls for just the purchase of the eight subs and 12 P-3Cs for around NT$340 billion (US$10 billion). The Patriot batteries will be included in the regular defense budget.
ESCALATING THREAT
In July, the Pentagon unveiled an annual report on China's military power that expressed apprehension about the rapid increase in the number of ballistic missiles that Beijing has deployed against Taiwan. The number of missiles has increased at a rate of about 100 annually in recent years.
US experts have said that if Taiwan fails to beef up its defense capabilities, the cross-strait military imbalance will widen.
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