Defense issues have become increasingly contested in Taiwan as of late, with the Kuomintang (KMT) taking aim at a number of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) initiatives.
Taiwan’s domestic submarine program has become one visible target of the KMT. Taiwan currently plans to build a fleet of seven submarines between 2025 and 2038. It is estimated that the program will cost 284 billion Taiwanese dollars (US$8.74 billion). Currently, plans are to build two submarines, followed by three submarines, followed by another two submarines.
Taiwan’s first domestically developed and manufactured submarine, the Hai Kun – also known as the Narwhal – is currently undergoing Harbor Acceptance Tests, which are 83 percent to 85 percent complete. Yet while the administrations of Tsai Ing-wen and Lai Ching-te, both with the DPP, have touted the ongoing progress of the domestic submarine program as an object of national pride, the KMT has taken aim at its budget.
Next year’s budget for the domestic submarine program is NT$1.996 billion. But the KMT proposes to cut this by NT$1.7 billion NTD, a reduction of close to 90 percent, which has drawn criticism.
KMT legislator Chen Yeon-kang has attacked the domestic submarine program as a waste of money, suggesting that the government is moving prematurely without having conducted sufficient tests. In response, Minister of Defense Wellington Koo stated that construction of further submarines will only proceed after the Narwhal has been tested, but that it is necessary for such funding to pass in order to quickly build submarines once the tests are complete.
Chen’s criticisms come as part of more general attempts by the KMT to target the domestic submarine program. Last year, KMT legislator Ma Wen-chun faced allegations of gathering and leaking confidential materials of the domestic submarine program – criticized by Ma as not only wasteful expenditure, but “iron coffins” for sailors – to China and South Korea.
Ma was accused of leaking confidential information to China as part of efforts to curry favor with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As South Korean engineers were among those who provided Taiwan with critical technology needed for the domestic submarine program, Ma leaking information to South Korea was alleged to be part of efforts to stop such technology transfers from occurring. Seoul detained the involved engineers, before eventually releasing them.
Ma was later named by the KMT to be its representative on the Defense Committee of the legislature, as committee co-chair. Ma’s appointment – in spite of the leak allegations – signals the optics that the KMT currently aims to project on defense.
Indeed, the KMT has taken a harder line on efforts by the Lai administration to strengthen penalties for treason. Retired Taiwanese veterans have increasingly come under scrutiny for trips to China in which they meet with Chinese officials. Apart from raising concerns about such individuals leaking sensitive information, these trips have also involved Taiwanese veterans singing the People’s Republic of China national anthem or otherwise publicly professing political loyalty to the PRC. In response, there have been calls to strip such veterans of their pensions and to impose jail sentences. Under previous administrations, veterans who traveled to China to meet with Chinese government officials were largely seen as having only received minor punishments.
A current proposal by Weng Hsiao-liang – also the architect of a controversial KMT proposal intended to freeze the Constitutional Court – aims to remove Article 9-3 of the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area so that veterans cannot be punished for public vows of loyalty to the PRC. Weng has framed this proposal as intended to defend freedom of speech in Taiwan, though such claims are suspect when on a number of other occasions, Weng has publicly expressed her view that Taiwanese are Chinese.
It remains to be seen if the KMT as a whole decides to dig its heels in on the issue, however, with party chair Eric Chu having moved to downgrade the power of the Huang Fu-hsing branch of the party earlier this year. The Huang Fu-hsing was historically a special branch of the KMT that consisted of veterans, sometimes termed a “party in a party.” Chu may have been seeking to limit the power of increasingly hardline veterans in the party as part of an attempt to moderate the KMT’s image, or more likely, to weaken possible challengers in the upcoming KMT chair election.
More generally, in the course of the current legislative session, the KMT has sought to block the DPP’s budget for the next year multiple times. This includes the defense budget. The domestic submarine program, drummed up by the DPP as an accomplishment of Taiwan’s defense industry and an object of national pride, may be a particularly visible target of the KMT at present because it serves as a symbol of the DPP’s current defense initiatives.
The KMT’s efforts to block the budget would not be possible without the cooperation of its ally in the legislature, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). Still, likely fearing that the pan-Blue third party will eventually become indistinguishable from the KMT, the TPP has still sought to position itself as more moderate than the KMT. TPP legislator Lin Yi-chun has proposed cutting the domestic submarine program’s budget by half, rather than the close to 90 percent pushed for by the KMT.
The KMT has also sought to target efforts by the DPP to shore up civil defense. Draft legislation by KMT legislator Hsu Chiao-hsin – who dismissed the possibility of war in the Taiwan Straits by expressing the view that the “Chinese people will never make war on Chinese people” at the U.S.-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference in September – sought to exclude those under 20 from civil defense mobilization.
Critics of the KMT have accused Hsu of seeking to gut civil defense legislation. Hsu claimed she is seeking to prevent children from being sent to the battlefield. But the DPP has stressed that civil defense legislation is not intended to draft the population at large for combat, including those who have not reached adulthood, but would involve mobilizing the whole of society for medical relief, firefighting, maintaining social order, and other wartime tasks.
The Lai administration currently aims to train 400,000 to be part of a civil defense force, of which 270,000 would serve as reservists, 40,000 as firefighters, and 70,000 as part of disaster relief or volunteer police groups.
The DPP signaled its high priority on civil defense efforts during the 2024 election cycle by naming Puma Shen to the number two position on its party list, guaranteeing Shen a place in the legislature. Shen is a co-founder of the Kuma Academy, the best-known organization in Taiwan focused on civil defense initiatives. Likewise, the Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee convened by the Lai administration has been a high-profile initiative aimed at bolstering resilience for defense scenarios.
But the DPP’s current priority on civil defense may be why the KMT has decided to focus fire on such efforts. In turn, the pan-Green camp has accused the KMT of seeking to demonize civil defense initiatives.
Many public advocates of civil defense initiatives – including Shen, as well as United Microelectronics Corporation founder Robert Tsao, a funder of the Kuma Academy – were named by Beijing to its list of most-wanted Taiwanese independence separatists. This suggests that China may see civil defense efforts as a rising threat.