Taiwan can’t afford to hike its defence budget to more than three percent of GDP, the new leader of the democratic island’s biggest opposition party told AFP, which could derail the government’s spending plans. The Kuomintang party (KMT) controls parliament — and the government’s purse strings — with the help of the Taiwan People’s Party,…
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday sent his congratulations to the newly elected leader of Taiwan’s main opposition Kuomintang, Cheng Li-wun, calling for joint efforts to promote reunification. Xi said he hoped both the mainland’s ruling Communist Party and the island’s KMT could “strengthen their common political foundation and unite the vast majority of people…
Taiwan has often compared itself to being a “shrimp between two whales”. That expression has never been more apt than today with the US and China – which considers Taiwan to be part of its territory – locked in a standoff over the future of the island. At an event I attended some years ago,…
China harshly condemned Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te for a speech aimed at rallying the democracy’s 23 million people to stand up to its larger neighbor — a back-and-forth that illustrates a deepening cross-strait divide. Lai was “wantonly spreading separatist remarks about ‘Taiwan independence,’” the People’s Daily said in a commentary on Tuesday, adding the address…
Taiwan is vetting hundreds of thousands of military service members, public school teachers and civil servants in a bid to root out potential homegrown Chinese sympathisers, as Beijing intensifies espionage on the island. Alarm is growing in Taiwan over the extent of China’s infiltration on the self-ruled island, which Beijing claims is part of its…