Taiwan to face China threat with $10bn military aid from United States
The US has approved a defence bill that authorises up to $10 billion in military assistance to Taiwan over five years as Washington steps up its support for the island.
The Chinese Communist Party has long considered Taiwan a rogue part of its own territory and vowed to seize the island by force if necessary to achieve national unification.
The National Defence Authorisation Act now awaits President Biden’s approval after clearing the House of Representatives and the Senate. It is unclear if the military assistance will be in loans or grants as US politicians work on the spending bill for 2023.
Taiwan, an island of 23.5 million people, is pushing for grants, according to Defence News. “We thank the US Congress for its support for Taiwan’s security,” Andrew Huang, a spokesman for Taiwan’s diplomatic office in Washington, told the website. “We hope that assistance will be allocated as grants.”
China staged military exercises near Taiwan in August in response to a visit by Nancy Pelosi, the US House Speaker, to Taipei. Missiles were fired into the sea close to the island while warships and jets moved across the mid-point of the Taiwan Strait, previously considered a de facto border between Taiwan and the mainland.
Washington, which has a security pact with the island to defend it from any mainland invasion, has cemented its ties with the government in Taipei since the exercises, drawing condemnation from Beijing.
President Xi has promised to make maximal efforts to solve the issue peacefully, as preferred by Washington, but he has refused to exclude using force. During his latest meeting with Biden in Bali, Xi said the Taiwan issue was “at the core of China’s core interests, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-US relations, and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-US relations”.
He added: “Resolving the Taiwan question is a matter for the Chinese and China’s internal affair.”
To prevent the US from coming to Taiwan’s rescue in case of a military operation in the Taiwan Strait, Xi ordered the Chinese navy to beef up its far-sea capabilities. On Wednesday, Chinese warships sailed beyond the putative defensive line known as the “first island chain” east of Taiwan, via Japan’s Osumi and Miyako straits, reported the Global Times, a communist party newspaper. The island chain, extending through the South China Sea to the East China Sea, has been regarded as a defence line against any full-scale aggression by Beijing.
