China’s military expenditure this year has reached NT$5.86 trillion (US$207.1 billion), not only with an increase of 6.8% over last year, but also 16 times that of Taiwan’s military expenditure. The contrast between the national defense budgets on the two sides of the Strait is so wide. It is clear that the Beijing government does not give up using military force against Taiwan, but China is blaming the government led by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for insisting on Taiwan independence so a strong national defense is needed. The repeated increase in military expenditures has shown that China has never changed its belligerence but always used Taiwan independence as an excuse to fool others and themselves.

Even though the pandemic of COVID-19 spread from China to the entire world last year, and China’s economic growth has also suffered a severe setback, the Premier of China, Li Keqiang, still emphasized the “strengthening of the military” in his government work report addressed to the National People’s Congress. He said China would “train the soldiers and strengthen the military at all fronts to raise their readiness for battle,” and that “better coordination to address security risks in all areas is needed to increase the strategic capacity to defend national sovereignty, security, and development interests.”

A government’s budget reflects the value and priority of governance. According to the budget report of the Ministry of Finance of China, China’s defense budget expenditure in 2021 will be CN$1.35 trillion (about NT$5.86 trillion), an increase of 6.8% over 2020, higher than the growth rate of 6.6% from the previous year. Seeing China’s military spending exceed one trillion yuan for five consecutive years, the growth of military spending has always been a top priority in the core belief of CCP’s senior leaders.

In fact, in addition to the disclosed official military budget, China has been criticized over the years for concealing many “hidden figures.” The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that the actual military budget of China is 1.4 times that of the official figure. Scholars further estimated that the actual purchasing power of the renminbi is about 1.57 times that of the U.S. dollar. If that is taken into consideration, the scale of China’s defense budget this year will be as big as US$461.7 billion after conversion (nearly NT$13 trillion). If this figure is real, the increase in China’s military expenditure can only be described as “belligerent.”

What’s ridiculous is that the Beijing government itself intends to compete with the U.S. for global hegemony and intimates Taiwan with their new tricks of sending warplanes to buzz Taiwan. However, Wu Qian, the spokesman of China’s Ministry of National Defense, claimed that it’s because the “DPP authorities stubbornly insist on the separatist stance of Taiwan independence and pose the biggest actual threat to the peaceful stability of the Taiwan Strait,” so that “the world is not peaceful” and “the national defense must be strong.” Wu Qian put the blame for the increase in China’s military spending on Taiwan independence. This kind of inverted rhetoric is simply an utter lie.

The simplest question goes like this, if China is willing to give up the use of force against Taiwan, for what does it need such a huge defense budget?

Don’t forget that Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized at the UN General Assembly only last September that “China will develop peacefully, never seeking hegemony or expansion, with no intention of a cold or hot war with any country. It will assume the responsibility of a great power and actively assist the countries in need.” The huge defense budget announced not long after the talk is a slap in the face. The substantial annual growth of China’s military expenditure has clearly shown that peaceful development is not China’s national development goal. The real hidden message of China’s national development goal is always flexing muscles to show their potential and possibility of competing for hegemony with the U.S. and invading Taiwan by force.

Looking back at Taiwan’s defense budget, NT$366.8 billion has been allocated this year, an increase of 4.44% over last year, but the difference between the military expenditures of Taiwan and China has arisen from 15 times last year to 16 times. The Ministry of National Defense emphasized that our military has planned their budget according to the actual needs of defense operations and “will not engage in an arms race with any country.” However, how Taiwan demonstrates its determination to defend itself is still a key issue for the current development of our country.

It is true that Taiwan does not need to blindly invest in an arms race, but how to spend money wisely and fight for weapons that meet our needs from the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan will be a major challenge to the rational use of the defense budget. In addition to the figures of military expenditure, how Taiwan develops and builds its own weapons and how it enhances the combat capacity of its reserve force will be crucial aspects to watch.

With China’s mentality of hegemony that continues its belligerence and refuses to give up the use of force against Taiwan, Taiwan could only find its survival carefully with such a huge gap in military expenditures on two sides of the Strait if it demonstrates its determination to defend and empower itself.

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