Taipei (AFP) – Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said Wednesday his government will propose $40 billion in additional defence spending over eight years, as the democratic island seeks to deter a potential Chinese invasion.
Taiwan has ramped up defence spending in the past decade as Chinese military pressure intensified, but US President Donald Trump's administration has pushed the island to do more to protect itself.
Lai said Wednesday the military aimed to have a "high level" of joint combat readiness against China by 2027 -- which US officials have previously cited as a possible timeline for a Chinese attack on the island.
"The ultimate goal is to establish defence capabilities that can permanently safeguard democratic Taiwan," Lai said at a news conference in Taipei after announcing the $40 billion spending plan in an opinion piece in the Washington Post.
"Beijing authorities have recently intensified efforts aimed at turning democratic Taiwan into China's Taiwan, posing a serious threat to our national security and to Taiwan's freedom and democracy."
Communist China has never ruled Taiwan, but Beijing claims the island is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to annex it.
Lai's announcement came as Tokyo and Beijing were locked in a weeks-long diplomatic spat that followed remarks by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggesting Japan could intervene militarily in any attack on Taiwan.
The United States' top envoy in Taiwan said he "welcomes" the government's spending plan and urged the island's rival political parties to "find common ground" on boosting its defences.
Lai said the extra spending would go towards new arms purchases from the United States as well enhancing Taiwan's ability to wage asymmetrical warfare.
But he said the spending was not tied to Taiwan's ongoing tariff negotiations with the United States, insisting the main goal was to "demonstrate Taiwan's determination to defend" itself.
"We aim to bolster deterrence by inserting greater costs and uncertainties into Beijing's decision-making on the use of force," Lai said in the Washington Post.
His comments also follow US approval earlier this month for $330 million-worth of parts and components in Washington's first military sale to Taiwan since Trump's return to the White House.
Lai, who leads the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), previously laid out plans to boost annual defence spending to more than three percent of GDP next year and five percent by 2030.
The government has proposed NT$949.5 billion ($30 billion), or 3.32 percent of GDP, for defence spending next year.
The additional spending plan announced Wednesday would be spread out over eight years and exceeds the $32 billion previously revealed to AFP by a senior DPP lawmaker.
Lai said the funds would be used to develop the so-called "T-Dome" -- a multi-layered air defence system -- aimed at protecting Taiwanese combat forces, critical infrastructure and people's lives and property from Chinese missiles, as well as boosting Taiwan's own defence industry.
Long-range precision strike missiles, counter-drone systems and anti-ballistic missiles are among the list of items for purchase, the defence ministry said.
Su Tzu-yun, a military expert at Taipei's Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said Lai's spending plan is "what Taiwan requires".
"Freedom is not a free lunch," Su told AFP.
"The devil will be in the details and the execution," said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.
The government may struggle to get the proposed spending approved by parliament, where the main opposition Kuomintang party, which advocates closer ties with China, controls the purse strings with the help of the Taiwan People's Party.
Recently elected Kuomintang chairperson Cheng Li-wun has previously opposed Lai's defence spending plans, saying Taiwan "doesn't have that much money".
"Strengthening national defence is not about shouting slogans or simply buying more weapons,"said KMT lawmaker Ma Wen-chun.
Recruiting and retaining more troops was a "far more urgent and important issue" for the military, Ma said.
"In the future we may face a situation where there are no personnel left to operate these weapons."