Category: Taiwan

In his annual National Day speech, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te praised the country’s military forces and announced a new defense initiative called ‘T-Dome’, an AI-assisted missile-defense shield. It comes as the US Administration is pushing Taiwan to increase its defense budget to 10 percent of GDP to counter China’s growing threats and gray-zone tactics. By comparison, Lai has set a goal of 5 percent by 2030, which would already be a significant spike from next year’s 3.3 percent. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s leader called on Chinese President Xi Jinping to renounce his country’s coercive efforts to isolate Taiwan and its threats of military force. Could the T-Dome complicate an attempted Chinese invasion of Taiwan? How high should Taipei increase its military budget? And will Beijing respond to the speech with more provocative drills? In this special episode, we analyze Lai’s speech and discuss missile defense, Taiwan’s national budget, and China’s adverse military and political activities.Host: Yin KhvatOur guests:Alexander Huang Council on Strategic and Wargaming Studies Chair KMT Department of International Affairs DirectorLai I-chung Prospect Foundation PresidentGuermantes Lailari Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) Visiting Scholar Chapters:00:00:00 – Lai’s National Day Speech00:01:40 – ‘T-Dome’ Missile Defense Shield00:07:10 – Taipei’s Eyes Military Budget Spike00:14:58 – How might Beijing react to this year’s speech?00:21:20 – Lai calls on China to renounce coercion