Taiwan announces $40 billion defence budget to counter China’s invasion and to ‘refuse to submit to being China’s Taiwan’

Amid the ongoing tensions between Japan and China over the island nation, Taiwan has announced a $40 billion special defence budget and a series of measures to counter a possible Chinese invasion. While announcing the budget, the Taiwanese government said that Beijing's threats were "intensifying" and its plan to invade the island nation is speeding up. The Taiwan president, Lai Ching-te, said there was “no room for compromise on national security”. He said he was committed to boosting Taiwan’s defences in conjunction with US support.

“This is not an ideological struggle, nor a ‘unification vs independence’ debate, but a struggle to defend ‘democratic Taiwan’ and refuse to submit to being ‘China’s Taiwan’," Ching-te said.

The Taiwanese president said in his speech that the most threatening annexation scenario wasn’t Chinese military action. Rather, it was Taiwan "giving up".

“History has proven that compromising with aggression only brings war and enslavement,” he said.

Earlier, Taiwan's Defence Ministry announced that the government will start sending a booklet to its citizens, which will have all the details about the process. The booklet was unveiled in September only, and the ministry said the distribution will begin this week and end by January next year. As per CNN, the booklet will include guidelines on what supplies to stockpile in households and put in go-bags, and instructions on what to do when encountering enemy soldiers.

The booklet said that during a military invasion, “any claims that the government has surrendered or that the nation has been defeated is false."

“Given natural disasters such as typhoons and the military threat from China, we want our people to understand that the more prepared we are, the safer we will be," director of the Taiwanese military’s All-Out Defence Mobilisation Agency Shen Wei-chih said in a press briefing.

The fresh tensions over Taiwan

Amid diplomatic tensions with Japan after the newly elected Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's remarks on Taiwan, China has instructed its citizens to avoid travelling to Japan. This was after Takaichi told the Japanese Parliament on November 7 that use of force against the self-ruled island claimed by China could warrant a military response from Tokyo.

China's embassy in Japan warned its citizens against travelling to the country by posting online on Friday (Nov 14), “Recently, Japanese leaders have made blatantly provocative remarks regarding Taiwan, severely damaging the atmosphere for people-to-people exchanges.”