Taiwan's Military Is Rearming Itself With Nothing but Its Own Authority

On April 29, President Lai Ching-te rejected Beijing's offer of "peaceful reunification," calling it a package that "will inevitably bring endless troubles to our nation" ^[1]. Over the following ten weeks, his government's executive branch and military institutions produced a series of security actions that share one feature: none required a legislative vote and none depended on Washington. The pattern is the connection. No single story in the feed lines these up. The legislature passed a defense budget on May 8, but at roughly NT$780 billion it came in about a third below the NT$1.25 trillion Lai had proposed, and it excluded funding for foreign direct commercial sales and domestic contract production — including the Strong Bow anti-ballistic missile system and counter-drone technology. The DPP called it "not merely a discount on the dollar amount — it is a discount on Taiwan's comprehensive defence system" ^[2]. The opposition-led parliament then blocked Lai's supplementary defense spending and even refused to pass a symbolic resolution condemning China's new Unity Law ^[3][4]. The KMT's own internal divide between a NT$380 billion and a NT$800 billion-plus proposal left the party unable to unite behind any spending figure, with KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun admitting her party's defense bills were unlikely to pass before a potential Xi-US visit ^[4][5]. The external channel narrowed in parallel. After his May summit with Xi Jinping in Beijing, Trump froze a $14 billion Taiwan arms package, saying he was "holding that in abeyance, and it depends on China" and calling it "a very good negotiating chip" ^[6]. He went further, telling an interviewer "it is up to President Xi how he deals with Taiwan" and demanding Taiwan pay for its own defense, even as he transferred THAAD systems off the Korean Peninsula ^[7]. Taiwan's envoy to Washington, Alexander Yui, framed the implication plainly:

This is our responsibility, so we will not wait and depend for the U.S. cavalry to come and save us. — Alexander Tah-ray Yui

^[8]. Against that backdrop, the executive branch moved through channels that needed neither body. On May 13, the Mainland Affairs Council warned Taiwanese media outlets cooperating with Beijing's campaign to expose independence supporters that they could face prosecution under the Anti-Infiltration Act and National Security Act, with potential prison exceeding seven years — applying existing law as an executive instrument ^[9]. On June 14, the National Security Bureau launched a secure intelligence website inviting Chinese nationals to report on political, military, and economic developments inside China, modeled after US, British, and Israeli intelligence practices ^[10]. On June 18, the cabinet approved a $6.66 billion executive funding mechanism for indigenous drones and surveillance systems — roughly one-sixth the scale of the defense spending the legislature had blocked — finding a workaround through executive authority ^[8]. On July 1, the cabinet established a cross-agency counter-infiltration platform against China's Unity Law, pulling in the ministries of Interior and Justice alongside the Mainland Affairs Council, with anti-espionage training mandated for defense think tanks ^[3]. The military moved on its own authority too. Defense Minister Wellington Koo ordered five-day immediate combat readiness drills, citing shortened warning times for a potential Chinese attack.

It is intended to build the speed we believe is necessary for converting from peacetime to wartime status — Wellington Koo

Commanders cut unit preparation time from one week to a single day to simulate realistic combat conditions, and troops fired HIMARS and Thunderbolt-2000 rockets in coastal drills simulating defense against amphibious assault ^[11][12]. Those live-fire exercises used existing US-supplied weapons; the planned sale of 82 additional HIMARS systems remains on hold after the Trump-Xi meeting ^[12]. The domestically built submarine continued its sea trials — its 15th, including a ninth submerged navigation test — proceeding under military authority while the US president treated Taiwan as a "problem" to be worked out with Beijing ^[13]. China's coast guard, meanwhile, has effectively erased the unofficial median line buffer in the Taiwan Strait, with Taiwanese coast guard personnel reporting "They have already erased the median line" ^[14]. PLA aircraft kept up the pressure through the July 4 weekend, with 30 sorties on July 3 alone, 26 of them crossing the median line ^[15]. Lai built the ideological scaffolding before the military filled it in. On May 17 and 18, he asserted that Taiwan is already a sovereign, independent democratic country and that there is no separate "Taiwan independence" issue because the island is neither part of nor subordinate to the PRC ^[16]. On May 19, he declared that "no country has the right to annex Taiwan" and that Taiwan's future must be determined by its 23 million people ^[17]. Trump, simultaneously, said he was "not looking to have somebody go independent" and wanted Taiwan to "cool down" ^[16]. The gap between Lai's sovereignty assertions and Washington's discouragement of them is its own story — but the military did not wait for it to close. On July 5, the Ministry of National Defense reinstated anti-communist patriotic education for military academy graduates, reversing a 2002 rename that had dropped "anti-communist" from the course title. The MND's stated rationale was national security threats: graduates must "clearly understand national security threats and recognise the military mission of 'why we fight, and for whom we fight'" ^[18]. That language echoes Lai's framework, which the president established in April and May before the military acted. The education adds no hardware, buys no system, fires no missile. What it does is address the one dimension none of the other executive instruments can reach: what the armed forces believe they are fighting for. The drone funding, the intelligence website, the combat drills, the counter-infiltration platform — each operates in the material or operational domain. Anti-communist education operates in the ideological one. The military used authority requiring no legislative vote and no foreign signature, and the education addresses a dimension the other instruments cannot — what the armed forces believe they are defending and against whom. Lai can give speeches asserting sovereignty, but he cannot pass a full defense budget or compel Washington to release frozen arms. The legislature did pass a reduced budget, so the spending channel is constrained, not closed. The US remains rhetorically engaged — envoy Raymond Greene urged Taiwan to become a "hornet's nest" of drones, and Lai called asymmetric capability a "race against time" ^[19] — but even that advice ran into legislative constraints, as the KMT-dominated parliament restricted defense funds specifically to US arms purchases and the KMT countered with legislation capping drone spending at $7.5 billion over six years ^[19]. The military is the institution that can act without either parliament or Washington, and it has done so across a dozen moves in ten weeks. Beijing will frame the education as provocation, not deterrence — it already condemns Taiwan's domestic ideological posture, not just military hardware, as "secessionist" ^[20]. China's Taiwan Affairs Office has called Taiwan's combat drills the work of "troublemakers" "stubbornly clinging to the separatist stance," and a PLA spokesperson warned that "military posturing cannot substitute for genuine security" ^[21]. The anti-communist education will draw the same vocabulary. What is different is that this time the response cannot be blocked by a parliamentary vote or frozen by a US president. The next observable test is whether naming the enemy, as a matter of institutional doctrine, changes what Taiwan's forces are prepared to do when the warning time the defense minister says is shortening runs out.