Taiwan is a priority partner for the US in the joint production of defense equipment, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene said.
Greene made the remarks in an interview with Japanese public broadcaster NHK World, published on Oct. 25.
Asked about remarks made by former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that Taiwan should spend 10 percent of its GDP on defense, Green said: “I don’t think we’ve done an evaluation on how much [Taiwan] can spend."
Photo: Screen grab from NHK World’s YouTube channel
“There are many areas that I think need to be invested in and I think we’re quite pleased that the Lai [President William Lai (賴清德)] administration is not only implementing defense reform and not only increasing the spending levels on defense, but also is investing in these areas of broader resilience and security,” he added.
The government has proposed an 8 percent increase from last year’s defense budget and also invested in the broader “whole-of-society resilience,” including energy security, cyber security and telecommunications resilience, he added.
Asked to elaborate on his previous remarks that he hopes Taiwan would participate in the joint production of defense equipment with other countries, Greene said: “Taiwan has quite an advanced defense industrial base already” and the US is “looking at a variety of partners around the world — especially countries like Japan where we have long-time defense-industrial relationships.”
Aside from opportunities in traditional defense industries, there are also opportunities given the increasing application of civilian technologies for defense purposes, such as in drones or integrating advanced microchips into defense systems, he added.
“And in all of these areas, given Taiwan’s very strong industrial base, very strong technology base, we see Taiwan is obviously a priority partner,” he said. “I expect to see those discussions to continue on and opportunities to continue to manifest themselves in the future.”
Asked about the importance of joint production of defense equipment and lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, the AIT director said: “I think one of the lessons that we’ve learned is the need to make sure that the equipment we produce is interoperable or even interchangeable. So if there is a need to send equipment in an emergency to a partner, that equipment could be utilized.”
Regarding China’s “Joint Sword 2024-B” military drills around Taiwan on Oct. 14, Greene cited how it was the first time China conducted a military exercise in response to a Double Ten National Day presidential address.
“We believe that the address President Lai delivered on 10/10 was very routine, very normal, covered themes that we’ve seen in previous addresses by his predecessors,” he said.
“We were very concerned by the fact that China chose to take advantage of that opportunity to conduct an exercise which we believe undermines peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” he added.
Asked, “If China were to invade Taiwan today, would Taiwan be able to repel the Chinese forces?” Greene said he would not get into any hypotheticals, but said that the US was impressed with the reforms Lai and his predecessor have implemented, including the reinstatement of one-year conscription.
The US is also impressed with Lai’s focus on the whole of society’s resilience and we believe all these efforts contribute to maintaining that deterrence, he said.
The US is also working closely with key allies and partners to build broader deterrent capabilities in the Pacific region, he added.
Additional reporting by Lee I-chia
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
RSS