Why is the US arming Taiwan?

The US is breaking with precedent to arm Taiwan "to the teeth" in order to help the island defend itself from the threat of China's far-superior military, said the BBC's said Rupert Wingfield-Hayes.

President Joe Biden has approved an $80 million (£64.6 million) grant to Taiwan for the purchase of American military equipment, amid increasing aggression from Beijing in the South China Sea. 

"To the casual observer it didn't appear a steep sum," said Wingfield-Hayes, the BBC's correspondent in Taipei, being "less than the cost of a single modern fighter jet". After all, "Taiwan already has on order more than $14 billion worth of US military equipment. Does a miserly $80 million more matter?"

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But the "fury" of Beijing's response – China said it "deplores" what the US had done – shows that "this time something was different": the source of the money. The $80 million "comes from American taxpayers". 

And according to Wang Ting-yu, a ruling party legislator with close ties to Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, this is "the tip of what could be a very large iceberg". 

What did the papers say?

For decades, the US "has maintained that Taiwan, a self-governing island, is part of China", said Hope O'Dell for non-profit organisation the Chicago Council on Global Affairs's "Blue Marble" newsletter. 

Washington has "maintained a delicate balance" by arming the island to "fend off any Chinese aggression" while refusing to recognise Taiwan as a sovereign nation, despite a "robust" unofficial relationship. 

It has largely done so via the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which allows it to "provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character". The balance lets the US trade with China while maintaining an alliance with Taiwan. 

But military balance across the Taiwan Strait "has tipped dramatically in China's favour", said Wingfield-Hayes. "The old formula no longer works."

Amid increasing tensions with Beijing and ongoing Chinese combat exercises around Taiwan, Biden announced a $345 million arms package for Taiwan in July this year – the first time this type of transfer has occurred between the two countries. 

China responded furiously, accusing the US of harming "China's sovereignty and security interests" and undermining "peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait", CNN reported.

But it's the programme under which this latest grant is happening – foreign military finance (FMF) – that makes the difference. The FMF programme has been used to send around $4 billion of military aid to Kyiv since Russia's invasion. It has also sent billions more to Afghanistan, Iraq and other diplomatically recognised countries. 

The programme allows military equipment deals to bypass lengthy approvals process: particularly important "given that a divided Congress has held up billions of dollars worth of aid for Ukraine", said Wingfield-Hayes.

The "massive military aid packages" are "the Biden administration's efforts to build Taiwan's defense capabilities at a faster pace to match PLA [Chinese military] modernisation efforts", Naiyu Kuo, a Eurasia Group analyst focused on Taiwan, told Insider.

The US is likely concerned with the bigger picture too. If China were able to take Taiwan, said the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in June, "it would be far more difficult for the US to maintain a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific or prevent a Chinese bid for regional dominance".

What next?

Taiwan is preparing to send two battalions of ground troops to the US for training, Ting-yu told the BBC: the first time this has happened since the 1970s.

Taipei is switching to a "fortress Taiwan" strategy, said the Wingfield-Hayes, an approach that both Taiwan and US hope would make the island more difficult for China to invade. However, thanks to the outdated artillery that Taiwan's troops can muster, the island is "woefully under-prepared for a Chinese attack".

There is "fierce debate" in Washington about how far the US should go in its support of Taiwan, while avoiding provoking Beijing.

But some experts warn that instead of deterring Chinese aggression, "increasingly emphatic US statements and gestures in support of Taiwan's independence could instead accidentally provoke it", said Insider. 

However, "international society has to decide whether Taiwan matters", William Chung, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research in Taipei, told the BBC. If the G7 or Nato were to "internationalise the Taiwan situation", he said, it would "make China think twice about the cost".