Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te on Thursday announced a proposed defense budget of $19.76 billion in U.S. dollars for the 2025 fiscal year.
The proposal would increase military spending by 6.7 percent over 2024, reaching the highest level ever allocated for defense by the Republic of China (ROC).
“We are determined to enhance our self-defense capabilities and strengthen cooperation with our democratic partners to ensure peace and prosperity,” Lai said on Wednesday.
Lai did not specifically mention China as the main threat to “peace and prosperity,” but it is clearly the adversary Taiwan is most concerned with.
Tensions between China and Taiwan have increased steadily ever since Lai was elected to succeed fellow Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member Tsai Ing-wen in January. China condemned both Tsai and Lai as “separatists,” and has sought to diplomatically isolate Taiwan ever since Tsai took office.
Lai’s record defense budget proposal was not really a radical departure from Taipei’s normal spending priorities. The new military budget is still considerably less than the three percent of GDP that is generally considered reasonable by international analysts, and Taiwan still spends more on social welfare, education, science, and economic development.
Taiwan’s military budget has increased every year for the past five years, after hitting a low of two percent of GDP in 2019. If Lai’s budget proposal is approved by the legislature before its scheduled December 1 deadline, Taiwan will rank 21st worldwide in military spending, while China is now Number Two, and the United States remains Number One.
The U.S. government has been urging Taiwan to increase spending as the Chinese threat grows. Taiwan currently gets about 99 percent of its military equipment from the United States, which is committed to defend the island if China invades.
Taiwan extended its term of compulsory military service for men from four months to one full year in January. New recruits were also told to expect more vigorous training, including combat training closer to what U.S. soldiers receive. Some Taiwanese youth responded positively to the changes, saying they were eager to defend their country and wanted their year of mandatory service to be meaningful.
Eight months later, Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo said the military lacks the equipment and instructors to provide the kind of intensive training promised. Plans to upgrade training and exercises for reservists are also lagging behind schedule. Defense Ministry plans to teach both new conscripts and reservists to use state-of-the art drones and surface-to-air defenses have not been realized.
Military analysts believe China’s growing strength, and its heavy investments in more advanced weapons technology, mean Taiwan can no longer count on stopping a Chinese invasion before it puts boots on the ground. Taiwan’s two-million-strong reserve force would be vital in an extended ground battle, but reserve officers complain they lack the funding for proper training.
The confidence of the Taiwanese public in its armed forces has sunk to dangerously low levels, in part because new recruits are not getting the kind of boot camp experience promised. Many seem to believe that showing China strength and making it reluctant to invade is a good idea, but actually winning the war if Beijing pulls the trigger is highly unlikely.
These issues were spotlighted when Taiwanese TV rolled out the trailer for an upcoming show called Zero Day in late July. The storyline follows a hypothetical Chinese invasion and its aftermath.
The ten-part series, partly funded by the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture, is not scheduled to air until next year, but the 17-minute trailer hit Taiwanese culture like a bomb, touching off a firestorm of social media commentary and reducing some viewers to tears:
Politicians from the China-friendly opposition party Kuomintang lashed out at Zero Day as paranoid propaganda, a bit of “cognitive warfare” cooked up by the DPP government to terrorize the public into supporting more military spending.
The producers insisted the government had no input into the story – which, judging from the trailer, does not paint the Taiwanese government in the most flattering light. One of the plot points involves the Taiwanese president bugging out as soon as the Chinese invasion begins. The trailer includes a scene in which a Taiwanese social media influencer says her government just wants to use the people as cannon fodder, without concern for their suffering.
Showrunner Cheng Hsin-mei said her goal was to examine “that dark shadow of war that looms in the minds of the Taiwanese people,” who live their entire lives knowing that devastating war is a realistic possibility.
“Some people said that after watching it, horror movies didn’t seem scary any more. Some people said they wanted to protect Taiwan, while others said it was overly exaggerated, and defeatist,” she said, comparing the tone of her series to a zombie apocalypse film.
“Not a single word of the script had been modified by the government. This is not a political propaganda video or patriotic film,” said director But Lo.
The remarkably intense reaction to the “Zero Day” trailer suggests it may become a politically influential work of art, no matter what its creators intended. The question is whether it will inspire Taiwanese to find their warriors within and demand even more emphasis on defense, or crush their souls.