After the United States and Israel launched “Operation Epic Fury” against Iran, killing supreme leader Ali Khamenei and more than 40 senior military and political officials, the CCP, a close partner of the Iranian regime, responded with angry condemnation. CCP foreign minister Wang Yi called Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar to demand an immediate stop to military operations. Wang’s remarks went viral in Taiwan for all the wrong reasons: they accidentally validated the Taiwanese government’s case for higher defense spending.
CCP state media outlet Xinhua reported that Wang Yi told Saar Beijing opposes the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran and called for an immediate halt to prevent the conflict from spiraling. Wang said force cannot solve problems and will only create severe consequences. He declared: “The true value of military strength lies not on the battlefield, but in preventing war.” He claimed Beijing maintains a fair position on Middle Eastern affairs and would continue playing a “constructive role” in de-escalation.
Taiwan’s Liberty Times reported that Wang’s remarks triggered a wave of online ridicule. Taiwanese commenters immediately spotted the irony: a regime that threatens Taiwan with invasion was lecturing others about the peaceful purpose of military power. Users pointed out that Wang’s own logic validates the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s argument that strong defense spending deters aggression. “The KMT’s big brother just admitted that military power prevents war,” one user wrote. “So why does the KMT keep saying President Lai’s defense budget means Taiwan wants to start a fight?” Others mocked the sheer brazenness, noting that a regime routinely sending warplanes and warships around Taiwan was now posturing as a voice of restraint.
The timing sharpened the hypocrisy. Shortly after Wang Yi’s remarks, Chao Shao-kang, a prominent KMT media figure and founder of the party’s “Combat Blue” faction, held a seminar on Wednesday, March 4, titled “How Should the Special Defense Budget Be Reviewed?” Every panelist was a retired military officer with a record of pro-Beijing commentary. All of them argued against Taiwan’s proposed defense purchases.
According to the Liberty Times, the seminar amounted to a parade of retired generals praising the CCP’s military capabilities on camera. Some said it would be easy for Beijing to carry out a “decapitation strike” on Taiwan’s president. On the subject the seminar was nominally about, all participants argued that increasing arms spending was pointless. One suggested the money should go to subsidizing Taiwan’s national health insurance program instead.
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A Canadian academic demolished the retired generals’ logic
Shen Rong-chin, an associate professor at York University in Canada, posted a detailed rebuttal on Facebook on March 4. He noted that every panelist opposed the special defense budget, making the event an anti-arms-purchase seminar in practice.
Shen singled out retired Navy captain Huang Zheng-hui, who made two arguments against the Lai government’s proposed 1.25 trillion NTD defense package spanning eight years. First, Huang argued that the purpose of buying weapons is to never use them, and therefore purchasing Harpoon anti-ship missiles that might sit unused for 30 or 50 years before being scrapped at additional cost is wasteful.
Shen compared this reasoning to the Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze,” where the detective solves a mystery by noticing the dog that did not bark. If Taiwan’s defense spending secures 30 to 50 years of peace, Shen wrote, then every dollar has earned its return. “A former Navy captain who spent half his life in uniform somehow fails to grasp the value of peace,” he observed.
Huang’s second argument was that the CCP’s strength lies in military power while Taiwan’s lies in health care and elder care. Taiwan should therefore halve its defense budget from 900 billion NTD to 450 billion and invest the savings in health care, making mainland Chinese citizens so envious of Taiwan’s democratic achievements that they would pressure Beijing to abandon its plans to invade.
Shen’s rebuttal was blunt: “Is Taiwan supposed to intercept missiles with its elder care system? If someone cooks well, do they upgrade their kitchen instead of buying a burglar alarm?” He noted that Taiwan already ranks among the top ten democracies in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, the only non-majority-white country to do so, yet Beijing’s ambitions to absorb the island have only grown. The idea that democratic soft power alone can deter a military invasion has no basis in reality.
Shen concluded by identifying a pattern among retired Taiwanese military figures who appear regularly on pro-Beijing media: they combine military ignorance with ideological alignment toward Beijing. The sooner Taiwan moves beyond their thinking, the sooner its armed forces can modernize.
Washington reaffirmed Its Taiwan arms sales policy
President Lai Ching-te’s 1.25 trillion NTD special defense budget has been stalled in Taiwan’s legislature for months by the KMT-led opposition coalition. The bill was sent to committee on Friday, March 6, but the KMT and Taiwan People’s Party proposed competing versions with drastically reduced totals, including one by KMT legislator Cheng Li-wen cutting the package to just 350 billion NTD.
On Feb. 12, a bipartisan group of 37 U.S. senators and representatives wrote to the speaker of Taiwan’s legislature urging passage as a demonstration of Taiwan’s will to defend itself. On March 3, Elbridge Colby, the U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee and reaffirmed that Washington’s commitment to providing Taiwan with defensive weapons has remained consistent for nearly fifty years.
Colby testified about the Trump administration’s first defense strategy document of its second term, released in January. Republican Senator Jim Banks asked specifically about the $11.1 billion Taiwan arms sale package announced late last year. Colby said the Taiwan issue is highly sensitive but reaffirmed that the United States firmly opposes any attempt to change the cross-strait status quo through violence or coercion. He described the administration’s approach as “strong, clear, but low-key,” consistent with longstanding U.S. policy.
Colby noted that the current defense posture places greater emphasis on achieving concrete deterrence through action. He delivered a pointed message to “America’s allies and partners”: if they expect U.S. defense support, whether they are meeting their own defense responsibilities matters greatly.
By Li Jingyao
