One year after the KMT stoked controversy over pushing through the largest set of budget cuts in Taiwanese history–freezing or cutting 1/3rd of the government’s operation expenses–it appears that the party intends to continue efforts to drastically reduce government funding...
According to the Ministry of National Defense, KMT legislator Ma Wen-chun, the co-chair of the defense committee in the legislature, had scuppered Taiwan’s plans to acquire explosive material RDX through purchase from India by exporting it through the Home-Max Furniture Trading Company. This is not the first time that Ma has been accused of leaking confidential details about the Taiwanese military...
The TPP continues with its delicate balancing act on defense. In particular, the TPP seems to still be aiming to differentiate its political stance from that of the KMT, while still maintaining a pan-Blue political orientation and, in this way, taking an active stance against passing defense spending...
The KMT has finally released its own version of the special defense budget. This proves, in some sense, a reversal of stance for the KMT, which previously sought to block any arms purchases from the US by way of the special defense budget, voting this down ten times. This occurred with the claim that the US was simply trying to foist useless weapons onto Taiwan through arms purchases and that arms purchases would, in fact, provoke China to further hostilities directed at Taiwan...
