A national security official from Taiwan said this week the government would seek to increase defense spending at least 2% every year. It was more a reminder than an announcement, as Taiwan has long paced its military budget with economic growth that comes in around the same percentage. But money particularly matters now as Taiwan is working hard this year on a pair of capital-intensive, homegrown pieces of hardware to sharpen defenses against ever restive political rival China.
China said in March it would spend 7% more on its own military, already ranked the world’s third most powerful. That percentage is also roughly consistent with Chinese GDP expansion. Within the past year, China has finished work on a homemade fighter plane and an indigenous aircraft carrier. Analysts believe Chinese President Xi Jinping also wants to centralize military command so armed forces could better fight offshore if needed. The island Taiwan is 160 kilometers from China at its nearest point.
Taiwan, a technology hardware manufacturing hub for more than five decades, wants to develop its own weaponry because China’s diplomatic pressure blocks most other countries from selling it arms. The United States approves only occasional arms sales, to wit a $1.42 billion package announced in June, and to assuage anger from Beijing doesn’t give Taiwan everything it might want.
Homemade submarines and a trainer jet
In January and April, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense signed contracts with manufacturers including local shipbuilder CSBC Corp. to develop a $3.3 billion submarine within eight years. The two Dutch-made subs in operation around the island are now some 30 years old. To put the project in perspective, this year’s overall military budget is just $2.92 billion. But Taiwan’s odds are good. Its shipbuilding experience goes back to 1948 with the establishment of a modern (for that time) company in the northern port city Keelung.
For further development of homegrown defenses, in February the ministry picked Taiwanese Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology to develop the 66 XT-5 Blue Magpie trainer jets, and the institute has found a builder, according to domestic media and ministry spokesman Chen Chung-chi. The jet that's specifically designed to train pilots for flight should be able to fly by 2020 and will slowly phase out older aircraft.
Taiwan has tried off and on for about 35 years to develop weapons including missiles, sea mines and torpedoes. Since 2011, to note one example, the island military has used its own anti-ship cruise missile, dubbed the Brave Wind III. Taiwan’s military ranks world No. 18 in the GlobalFirePower.com database.
The squeeze from China
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan despite 70 years of self-rule. Most Taiwanese say in opinion surveys that they prefer autonomy to unification with Beijing, but China insists the two sides eventually come under one flag and has not ruled out the threat of force, if needed, to get there.
Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen rejects Beijing’s dialogue condition that both sides belong to an entity called China. They have not talked since Tsai took office in May 2016. China sailed an aircraft carrier around Taiwan at the beginning of 2017, a provocative gesture that raised the local defense ministry's alert. Comments about a 2% military spending hike came on Monday as Tsai was on a trip to visit the United States, despite Chinese objections. She will later visit three diplomatic allies in the South Pacific.
Aerospace and submarine projects are expected to lead homegrown military development under Tsai, whose term ends in 2020 but who could be reelected for another four years. In a speech Oct. 10, National Day in Taiwan, she called indigenous weapons production a key industry.
“I think her plan is to enable or empower Taiwan’s domestic defense industry to become more competitive and to be more viable and to be part of in the international defense industry supply chain,” said Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan.
