Taiwan committed to strengthening defence, says its govt after Trump comments

TAIPEI – Taiwan is committed to boosting its defences and working with the United States, the foreign ministry said on July 18, days after

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was quoted as saying Taiwan should pay to be defended.

The US is Chinese-claimed Taiwan’s most important international backer and arms supplier despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties, and Washington is bound by law to provide the means for the island’s defence.

Taiwan’s government has made defence modernisation a priority, including developing its own submarines, and has said many times that the island’s security rests in its own hands. The budgeted defence spending for 2024 amounts to 2.5 per cent of its gross domestic product, a historic high.

Speaking to reporters in Taipei, Mr Kuoyu Chiao, the deputy head of the North America department at Taiwan’s foreign ministry, said Taiwan and the US share the universal values of democracy, freedom, and human rights, and have a mutually beneficial economic relationship. “Therefore, Taiwan has long enjoyed cross-party and cross-government support in the United States,” he said, declining to comment directly on Trump’s remarks.

“In the future, we will continue to work together with the United States and like-minded countries to strengthen our national defence capabilities and jointly maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” Mr Chiao added.

A top national security adviser to Trump

said on July 17 that Taiwan needs to boost its defence spending significantly in the face of potential Chinese aggression.

Late on July 17, Taiwan’s ruling party said Trump’s comments regarding the island were nothing more than a hope that Taiwan would show the same determination to protect its own security as Japan, South Korea and the European Union.

“China is the biggest threat to the United States; this is the consensus of the Democratic and Republican parties,” Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party secretary-general Lin Yu-chang said in a statement. “Now is the best era of Taiwan-US relations.”

Unlike Japan and South Korea, Taiwan has no formal defence agreement with the US, a previous treaty being terminated in 1979 when Washington switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing.

Taiwan has a backlog worth some US$19 billion (S$25.5 billion) of arms deliveries from the US, which US officials and politicians have repeatedly pledged to speed up.

Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control. President Lai Ching-te, who says only the Taiwanese people can decide their future, has repeatedly offered talks but has been rebuffed.

US President Joe Biden has upset the Chinese government with comments that appeared to suggest that the US would defend Taiwan if it were attacked, a deviation from a long-held US position of “strategic ambiguity”. REUTERS