After blocking the government’s eight-year, NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.72 billion) special defense budget, and following a hurried and unscheduled visit to the US, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) unveiled his own defense procurement bill. Its headline feature is simple: a spending ceiling of NT$400 billion.
Rather than offering an alternative, Huang simply lifted the list of items approved for sale by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency on Dec. 17 last year. Valued at US$11.1 billion, it was the largest single package of weapons the US has ever approved for Taiwan. Huang declared the list “enough” and capped total spending at NT$400 billion, creating the impression that Taiwan has followed US advice and that the Executive Yuan’s spending proposal would be reckless.
It remains unclear whether the Cabinet’s special budget already incorporates the items the US approved last month. Either way, Huang’s proposal is not aimed at building the kind of defense Taiwan needs. The government is proposing to build a safe house; Huang is offering a purchase list for furniture.
The government’s proposal is not a menu, it is a defined procurement plan, organized into seven categories: precision artillery; long-range precision strike missiles; air defense, anti-ballistic and anti-armor missiles; uncrewed vehicles and countermeasure systems; equipment to sustain prolonged combat; artificial intelligence-assisted and command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems; and systems jointly developed or procured with the US.
One plan builds a shield. The other selects a handful of tools.
The distinction matters most for President William Lai’s (賴清德) proposed “T-Dome” air and missile defense system. It is not a single weapon. It is a layered structure: early-warning radar, interceptors at multiple altitudes, integrated command networks, civil defense coordination and stockpiles for sustained use. Under a NT$400 billion ceiling, which layer survives? The radar? The interceptors? The network?
A dangerous political narrative also underlies the debate — that defense spending is waste and cutting it is virtue. That turns preparedness into extravagance and “letting it be” into responsibility, but defense is insurance: Its value is invisible until it is needed.
The timing makes the argument more urgent. China’s internal purges are narrowing military decisionmaking to one man. That increases the risk of miscalculation. Taiwan’s margin for error is shrinking. The country should be building resilience, not redefining defense as a budget line to be bargained over.
The real choice before Taiwan is not between NT$1.25 trillion and NT$400 billion. It is between building a defense system and buying a partial substitute. Between integrated protection and fragmented capability. Between shaping deterrence and shaping hopes.
If Huang believes his plan is sufficient, he should explain it in detail. Until he does, his claim of fiscal responsibility remains incomplete.
The same responsibility applies to the government. Silence is not neutrality; it is surrender of the narrative. The Lai administration must explain, in plain, but serious terms, what the NT$1.25 trillion plan builds that the NT$400 billion plan cannot — not in abstract budgets, but in concrete capability.
The Ministry of National Defense should hold a news conference to show the public what the NT$1.25 trillion plan constructs, and what the NT$400 billion plan dismantles. It should ask the opposition a simple question: Which layer of defense do you want removed?
Taiwanese demand — and deserve — an answer.
John Cheng is a retired businessman from Hong Kong now living in Taiwan.
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