Remarks
Taiwan Needs to Spend More on Defense, Says a Former Diplomat
Richard Bush ran the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto embassy, for five years.
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In 2019, Taiwan spent 1.7% of its gross domestic product on its military, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. That’s just half the percentage the U.S. spent that year—not a lot for a government with bulging foreign exchange reserves that’s under threat of invasion.
China expert Richard Bush said on April 14 that Taiwan should raise defense spending and get more serious about training its soldiers to discourage China from attempting to take it by force. “Taiwan is not Canada,” Bush said. “It’s not Norway. It faces a serious adversary.”