For the first time, a majority of people in Taiwan support spending more on defense, according to a survey by the Institute of National Defense and Security Research.
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00:00This poll from the INDSR shows that 51% of people in Taiwan want to spend more on defense.
00:06Is that significant? And if so, what's the motivating factor behind that?
00:10I think that it's great news that a majority of Taiwanese people want to spend more on defense.
00:15I think that part of it, I should say that I think that the bulk of the reason for that is
00:21because of the Chinese gray zone coercion and the aggression that China is showing towards Taiwan.
00:25And I think that part of it is also that Taiwanese people see that there is pressure from the United States to spend more on defense.
00:33You know, President Trump was asked about this before the election, and he said that Taiwan should spend 10% of GDP on defense.
00:41You know, Bridge Colby, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, echoed that number during his confirmation hearing.
00:47I don't think that 10% of GDP is a realistic target for Taiwan.
00:52And we could spend, you know, too much time arguing whether the right number for Taiwan is 3%, 4%, 5%, or something even higher.
01:01But I think that the general thrust of that resonates with Taiwanese people, which is that 2.5% of GDP is not seen as sufficient.
01:09In this poll, a good number of people also support the idea of creating special budgets for the military to boost its defense.
01:16Can you explain how that would work?
01:17So I think that the special budget was traditionally a way of addressing that uncertainty by MND.
01:24It didn't necessarily know how to budget for these items.
01:28I think more recently, though, what we've seen with the Lye administration is that the special budget might be a creative way to get around a deadlock in the legislature.
01:35So if the opposition party wants to obviously hold up the government budget and hold up defense spending and raise questions, you know, it's easier to put a special budget forward in many ways than through the regular process.
01:51I think that if we're talking about this poll more narrowly and support for special budget in the poll, I mean, I think that makes sense on a very basic practical level.
02:01People don't want higher taxes and people don't want to contemplate tradeoffs.
02:05So if you ask somebody, do you want to raise defense funding, but you're going to have slightly worse health care or less investment in education or pensions?
02:14People don't want that one part of the report also shows that about 30 percent of the people also have no confidence in the military.
02:23Do you think that's because of the espionage cases that we're seeing being uncovered by the military?
02:28You know, I'm not generally a very optimistic guy.
02:31I'm usually a pessimist.
02:32But when I see these espionage cases being uncovered and I see the rings being being put out there in the public, I actually have more confidence now, because if you're saying that there is no espionage in Taiwan's military, then I think you're just not looking hard enough.
02:50You're not taking it seriously.
02:51But to me, this shows that they are taking it seriously and that they're looking at this, that they recognize that it's an issue that they have to address and they have to root out.
03:00So, you know, to me, if you don't hear anything about espionage, that's actually more worrying than seeing these these cases and seeing these people brought to justice.