Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is “distorting her political record” on Taiwan’s defense policy and misrepresenting her political stance to US audiences, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) mission in the US said in a news release on Sunday.
Cheng’s trip, her first to the US as KMT chair, is an attempt to “recast her record for an American audience,” the DPP said.
“The Cheng who courted [Chinese President] Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing in April has given way to a Cheng who casts herself as Taiwan’s steadiest defender and Washington’s most reliable partner,” it said.
Photo: CNA
The gap between Cheng’s remarks abroad and her actions in Taiwan is most evident in defense policy, the party said.
During stops in San Francisco and Boston, Cheng promoted a defense strategy driven by artificial intelligence (AI), including integrating AI into military command and decisionmaking, intelligence analysis, drone systems and air defense networks to reinforce asymmetric deterrence, the news release said.
Cheng’s actions contradict these words, it said.
She and the KMT caucus slashed a special defense budget act proposed by the Executive Yuan for NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.6 billion) in funding to NT$780 billion, it said.
The cuts affected systems central to Taiwan’s asymmetric warfare strategy, including AI-assisted intelligence and decisionmaking systems, tactical communications networks, uncrewed aerial and surface systems and counterdrone capabilities, it said.
While Cheng “brags about these capabilities” in the US, she was “personally responsible for gutting them,” the DPP mission said, referring to information shared by former Broadcasting Corp of China chairman and former KMT vice presidential candidate Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), who disagreed with Cheng’s push for an even larger budget cut.
While Cheng said the special defense budget was a “black-box” deal with no details provided, Taiwan’s special budget mechanism is not designed for line-by-line appropriation, but rather establishes a funding ceiling, with detailed review taking place later when the Executive Yuan submits the budget for legislative approval, the DPP said.
Cheng “is attacking the framework for not doing something it was never designed to do,” it said.
The Ministry of National Defense briefed lawmakers on the budget in detail, including in closed sessions due to the sensitivity of US-Taiwan arms cooperation, it said.
“Details Cheng claimed were missing were available to every legislator who wanted them,” it added.
The DPP mission rejected Cheng’s claims that the budget framework could facilitate corruption, saying that no evidence has been presented to support such allegations.
On the other hand, “the KMT itself presided over the largest defense-corruption scandal in Taiwan’s history,” it said, referring to the 1991 French frigate case, which involved more than US$500 million in illegal kickbacks routed through Swiss accounts tied to the KMT.
Cheng “will spend her days in Washington promising peace at all costs,” while hoping people do not remember what she did in Beijing and Taipei, which tells a different story, it said.
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