Taiwan to muscle up defense spending by $40 billion

SEOUL, South Korea — Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has launched a widespread media offensive to make clear that his government, or at least his party, is determined to defend the island democracy.

His media messages in recent days are aimed at three audiences: the U.S., Taiwanese citizens and Japan.

In a Tuesday op-ed published in The Washington Post, followed by a Wednesday press conference in Taipei, he announced a $40 billion supplementary budget to procure weapons.

On Wednesday, he said Beijing is engaged in an “unprecedented military buildup” while intensifying “provocations in the Taiwan Strait, in the East and South China seas, and across the Indo-Pacific.”

U.S. sources indicate that the Chinese military has been tasked with being capable of conducting an invasion by 2027.

“In response to growing pressure from Beijing, our defense spending, which has already doubled in recent years, is expected to rise to 3.3 percent of gross domestic product by next year,” he wrote in his U.S. op-ed. “I am committed to lifting this baseline to 5 percent by 2030, representing the largest sustained military investment in Taiwan’s modern history.”

What he called his “landmark package” will “fund significant new arms acquisitions from the United States” and upgrade asymmetrical capabilities.

Mr. Lai alluded to Beijing’s “infiltration and influence campaign” aimed at shifting Taiwanese public opinion and undermining democratic institutions.

China is deploying subkinetic but coercive “gray zone” tactics across the First Island Chain. These include influence operations, ramming and firing water cannons at vessels, and aerial and naval drills.

Mr. Lai wrote that he is accelerating the development of a multilayered T-Dome air defense system capable of countering Chinese drones, missiles and warplanes.

The Taiwanese president and his defense minister, Wellington Koo, had reportedly received a briefing from the National Security Council.

Mr. Lai praised President Trump in his editorial for emphasizing “the importance of American leadership around the world,” although he launched his media strategy amid greatly improved relations between Beijing and Washington.

China-U.S. ties have been cozy since Mr. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in South Korea last month, buttressed by a Monday leader-to-leader telephone conversation.

With a trade war truce in place, the positive momentum appears likely to persist through April, when Mr. Trump is scheduled for a state visit to China.

Washington has not spoken up publicly in support of its ally Japan despite Beijing’s rhetorical, diplomatic and trade barrage at Tokyo in response to newly minted Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Nov. 7 remarks about the importance of Taiwan to Japan’s security.

Mr. Lai is caught in a Catch-22 situation.

Washington is demanding that he increase his defense budget, which Mr. Lai, a hard-liner against Beijing, is keen to do.

Even so, his commitment of 5% of GDP to defense falls far short of that proposed by U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Eldridge Colby. Speaking at a hearing in March, before his April nomination, Mr. Colby suggested “10% [of GDP] or in that ballpark.”

Problematically for Mr. Lai, Taipei’s Legislative Yuan is controlled by the opposition Kuomintang. The KMT and an allied minor opposition party, the Taiwan People’s Party, are far less florid than he is toward Beijing and have held up budget approvals.

That is requiring some crafty political footwork.

Mr. Lai’s supplementary budget will likely be “including coast guard funding, now part of ‘Ocean Affairs,’ and also, akin to other countries, passing off a bunch of stuff as defense,” said a source familiar with regional defense sales.

Mr. Lai and his party’s frustration with domestic political constraints was apparent earlier this year.

The “Great Recall” vote, a surprise initiative crafted by the Democratic Progressive Party grassroots to redress the political deadlock, failed dismally over the summer. It sought to boot out 31 KMT lawmakers but had zero results.

A related issue is the Taiwanese martial backbone, or lack thereof.

In 2024, Mr. Lai established the Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee. Visitors to Taipei are often impressed by the enthusiasm of middle-class civilians to pay for private disaster preparation training courses for war.

However, the military imbalance between China and Taiwan is vast, with local challenges as well.

On one side of the defense spectrum, questions have been raised about the steadiness of Taipei’s top brass; on the other side, about the readiness of Taiwanese reservists.

Even highly motivated citizens complain that they could not, unlike Ukrainians, form militias or undertake partisan action because of their lack of weaponry, a byproduct of Taipei’s strict gun laws.

Mr. Lai addressed the question of commitment.

“Among all the possible scenarios for China’s annexation of Taiwan, the biggest threat is not force,” he said Wednesday. “It is our own surrender.”

Mr. Lai has one plus: He is gaining support from a neighbor.

Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi made an unusually high-profile visit to Yonaguni, the Japanese island closest to Taiwan, over the weekend and briefed the media on his country’s fortification efforts.

Yonaguni and the wider Ryukyu chain dominate strategic straits between Japan and Taiwan.

The ongoing weaponization of the islands, which was low-profile before Mr. Koizumi’s visit, presents potentially lethal obstacles to any attempt by Chinese warships to encircle or strike Taiwan from the north.

Mr. Koizumi visited Yonaguni after Beijing’s furious reactions to Ms. Takaichi’s remarks. Before assuming Japan’s premiership in October, she was a strong proponent of Japan-Taiwan relations.

The media-savvy Mr. Lai made his appreciation clear.

On Thursday, after a Chinese ban on all Japanese seafood imports, he posted images of himself dining on Japan’s favorite snack in what has been dubbed “sushi diplomacy.”