Military experts yesterday urged the Ministry of National Defense to increase defense spending to at least NT$400 billion (US$14.15 billion).
The academics made the suggestions after China on Friday unveiled its national defense budget of 1.35 trillion yuan (US$208 billion), which is 16 times larger than Taiwan’s defense budget of NT$361.7 billion.
Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), director of the Institute of National Defense and Strategic Research’s division of defense strategy and resources, said the year-on-year increase of Chinese defense spending was political and defense-related.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The year 2027 would mark the centennial of the founding of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which it plans to celebrate by launching its third carrier, and continuing production of Type 075 amphibious assault ships, Type 096 ballistic missile submarines and H-20 stealth bombers, Su said.
The new units would allow China to stabilize its influence within the first island chain and further project its power into the second island chain, satisfying Beijing’s military and political goals, he said.
The increased production of military hardware would also be in line with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) promotion of a “dual circulation” strategy, as it would stimulate the economy, bolster the military and achieve political stability, Su said.
Su also said the ministry should scale its defense spending to at least NT$400 billion to balance the military’s upkeep costs and investment in precision munition and platforms.
National Taiwan University associate professor of political science Chen Shih-min (陳世民) said that the disparity in defense spending across the Taiwan Strait has been extant for many years, adding that the Chinese military’s near-daily incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone over the past half year is clearly hostile and threatening.
Despite this, Taiwan’s national defense has failed to comprise 3 percent of its GDP, while Israel, which faces military threats that are no less severe than Taiwan’s, has maintained defense spending equal to 5 percent of its GDP, he said.
Chen said that he was not arguing for a military arms race with China, but current defense spending would be hard-pressed to keep up with the cost of arms sales packages announced under former US president Donald Trump and President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) adoption of an indigenous arms manufacturing program.
Sheu Jyh-shyang (許智翔), a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that the disparate funding available to Taiwan and Chinese militaries lends more credence to support asymmetric warfare.
Sheu cited the use of large quantities of precision munitions to target platforms developed by China, as an example of goals for Taiwan to focus on.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS