Government officials and members of the press accompanied President Chen Shui-bian (
The nation has been conducting the Han Kuang annual military exercises since the middle of this month. Many of the exercises occur every year and are little noted. By contrast, attention-grabbing drills such as the simulated emergency jet landings on the highways -- the first of their kind in over 20 years -- have captured the public's imagination and been widely reported in the press. This latest exercise, with the president going out to sea on board a submarine, is one such attention-grabbing event.
These novel exercises have sparked a public discussion on national security. This offers the country another opportunity to debate the need for military purchases. It also offers a chance to discuss the multi-billion dollar military-purchase budget, which is stalled in the legislature as a result of the stand-off between the governing and opposition parties.
The strategic thinking of the nation's military is focused on keeping a decisive battle in the Strait. Far from being an aimless waste of funds, the purchase of anti-missile and anti-submarine arms and equipment therefore fills a crucial need. Currently, a scarcity of funds and the government's inability to persuade the opposition parties and the general public are preventing passage of this critical budget appropriation.
Under Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule, big military purchases resembled black holes. It was hard for the public to know what was going on. Even in the government, only a few people had a full grasp of the situation. Because of this lack of transparency, national funds were mixed up with private funds, and huge amounts of taxpayers' hard-earned money found their way into the pockets of vested interests.
What's more, the military-purchase budget has become a tool in the development of a pragmatic diplomacy. The government is exchanging arms purchases for international visits by top level officials and the development of diplomatic space.
The stalling economy has also meant that the government's tax income is falling precisely when military expenditures should be increased. This has led to public concern that spending on social welfare and infrastructure development will be curtailed.
To win approval for its multi-billion dollar budget allocation, Chen has gotten personally involved. He emphasized that both the government and the opposition should work together to approve this budgetary allocation. To help achieve this, Chen has even taken a ride in a submarine, a clear indication of the urgency with which the government views this issue.
National security should not be sacrificed to the standoff between the pan-blue and pan-green camps. Neither should the government view all the criticisms made by the opposition as malign obstructionism. We hope that the government will work hard to win public support for this NT$610 billion (US$18.2 billion) budgetary allocation for the military by addressing concerns of where the money will come from, its impact on other spending and the transparency of the purchasing process.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while