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By Lin Che-yuan, Chen Cheng-liang and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporters, with staff writer
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Opposition parties not passing defense funding harms Taiwan’s national security, two US senators said separately in rare public criticism.
“I am disappointed to see Taiwan’s opposition parties in parliament [the legislature] slash President [William] Lai’s (賴清德) defense budget so dramatically,” Roger Wicker, a Republican who chairs the US Senate Armed Forces Committee, said on social media.
“The original proposal funded urgently needed weapons systems. Taiwan’s parliament should reconsider — especially with rising Chinese threats,” he added.
US Senator Roger Wicker speaks at the Presidential Office in Taipei on Aug. 29 last year.
Photo: screen grab from the Presidential Office’s Flickr page
Wicker’s post linked to an article published by Bloomberg that said that the two opposition parties’ move was “potentially jeopardizing the purchases of billions of dollars of US weapons aimed at deterring the threat of invasion by China.”
Wicker in September last year said that Taiwan’s security is key to US interests, as the nation is home to critical semiconductor manufacturing and its fall could precipitate the collapse of US positions across the Indo-Pacific region.
Daniel Sullivan, a Republican, wrote on social media that “shortchanging Taiwan’s defense to kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is playing with fire.”
US Senator Dan Sullivan is pictured in an undated photograph.
Photo: Bloomberg
“Taiwan’s legislature adjourned last week without passing the budget necessary for Taiwan to defend itself. Meantime, the leadership of the opposition party responsible for this, the KMT [Chinese Nationalist Party], is in Beijing meeting with the CCP and planning bigger engagements. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on here,” Sullivan said.
In Taipei, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said the remarks from lawmakers of Taiwan’s most important ally highlighted the “extreme danger” the KMT and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) had put the nation in.
Citing Wicker’s post, he said that the KMT’s refusal to pass the special defense budget amid China’s rising military threat to Taiwan sent the wrong signal to the world.
“The KMT is doing everything in its power to delay Taiwan’s defense budget and efforts to improve [the nation’s] defensive capabilities, while throwing itself into China’s arms,” Wang said. “By its complicity in spreading China’s narrative of delegitimizing … Taiwan’s sovereignty, [the KMT] is facilitating the interiorization of Taiwan and the loss of its international support, as Hong Kong once did,” he said.
Separately yesterday, the KMT issued a response saying it “deeply regrets” that Wicker had “made comments on Taiwan without being sufficiently informed.”
The KMT has always supported national defense and its budget votes are aimed at de-escalating cross-strait tensions to pave the way for US President Donald Trump’s expected visit to China in April, it said.
The government’s military spending proposals neglected to furnish service members with adequate salaries, the party said, adding that it is not reasonable for Taiwanese generals to be paid less than non-commissioned officers in the US armed forces.
Additional reporting by Lin Hsin-Han
