CLSC Dialogues – Ep 27 – COL Kyle Marcrum and Dr. Jessica Liao – Taiwan’s Special Defense Budget and KMT Trip to Beijing, Part 1

In part one of this two-part episode, COL Kyle Marcrum and Dr. Jessica Liao discuss Taiwan President Lai’s special defense budget and why it is stalled in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan. Keywords: Taiwan, defense, budget

COL Kyle B. Marcrum Welcome to the CLSC Dialogues, a production of the China Landpower Studies Center at the US Army War College. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or the US government. I'm Colonel Kyle Marcrum, Director of the China Land power Studies Center. I'm joined today by Doctor Jessica Liao, associate professor of Asian studies at the US Army War College. She was also a Wilson China Fellow of 2020, and in 2022, she was the Economic Development Specialist in the US Embassy, Beijing, which was a little after my time. I was there ’14 to ’17. So thank you for commuting all the way from where—you came today from, instead of—I normally was going to say, I'd planned to say “thank you for commuting all the way from your office two stories above”, but I guess you're today you've actually drove up from Virginia? Jessica Liao Yeah. That's right. Marcrum Thank you for joining us. Liao Well, thank you so much for this opportunity. I'm delighted to be here talking about very important, timely topic. Marcrum Yes. And what Jessica and I are today we're going to talk about is Taiwan, specifically some of the recent undertakings in Taiwan politics. I think that there's a lot to be covered, a lot of complex background that needs to be talked about that is difficult to understand if you haven't been watching this for a long time. And so Jessica and I will start there. Jessica, one of the main things I wanted to talk about was Taiwan's defense budget. And one of the things I wanted to point out was this morning I was reading an article that called it Taiwan's Defense budget. In fact, it was in an article talking about multiple members of the Senate, US Senate, had traveled to Taiwan and wrote a letter to Taiwan to say, you need to pass a defense budget. I didn't read the actual letter from the senators, but the article made it sound like they were trying to pass a defense budget at all. But from what I, what were one of the things I wanted to talk about is this is actually a special budget. It's outside of their normal budget, but it's getting caught up in their unicameral legislative body called the Legislative Yuan. And I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about the three main political parties inside the Legislative Yuan. Liao Okay, great. That's a good starting point to get our listeners about the Taiwan politics and its background. So the landscape is basically three major parties, well, actually two major parties and then one half party. So it's sort of like United States it’s a bipartisan kind of system. And William Lai, that was the president of Taiwan now, his party is Democratic Progressive Party. And people also nicknamed it as the Pan-Green Coalition platform that is traditionally focusing on strengthening Taiwan's indigenous identity and maintaining the status quo in cross-strait relations and promoting Taiwan as a sovereign nation independent of the PRC. Although they never de jure, you know, like they make that kind of like independence as a de jure status. It's more like a de facto status. So that is the one that is controlling the executive branch of the Taiwan government. However, in the parliament, in the Taiwan parliament, that is sort of like a, you know, control, semi-controlled by the KMT, that is Kuomintang party, also known as the Pan-Blue Coalition. And KMT is the longest party standing in Taiwan. That was also the party led by Chiang Kai-shek when he fled to the island in 1949, so traditionally holding a more conservative and pro-business stance, and advocates for a closer dialog and economic exchange and ties with the mainland to reduce tensions and, you know, keeping a