Taiwan announced plans for a record increase to its defense budget on Thursday after huge military drills by China earlier this month sent tensions between the two to their highest in decades.
Taipei has proposed a defense budget of NT$415.1 billion ($13.7 billion) for next year, up 13% year-on-year, pending parliamentary approval.
An additional special budget will also be created specifically to acquire new fighter jets and other projects to boost naval and air capabilities, the top budgeting agency said in a statement.
"To protect national security, the overall defense budget for next year will reach NT$586.3 billion to a record high," a Cabinet spokesperson quoted Premier Su Tseng-chang as saying.
Taiwan lives under constant threat of invasion by China, which claims the democratic island as part of its territory to be seized one day – by force if necessary.
Beijing's saber-rattling has grown more pronounced under President Xi Jinping, China's most assertive leader in a generation.
The bolstered military budget was unveiled after Beijing staged unprecedented exercises around Taiwan in retaliation for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei earlier this month.
Beijing lashes out at any diplomatic action that might lend Taiwan legitimacy and has responded with growing anger to visits by Western officials and politicians.
For a week after Pelosi's visit, China sent warships, missiles and fighter jets into the waters and skies around Taiwan, its largest and most aggressive exercises since the mid-1990s.
Even before this month's drills, Beijing had increased military pressure on Taiwan in recent years, particularly with incursions into the island's air defense identification zone (ADIZ).
Last year, Taiwan recorded incursions by around 970 Chinese warplanes into its air defense zone, according to a database compiled by Agence France-Presse (AFP), more than double the roughly 380 in 2020.
The figure this year already exceeded 980, with more than 360 incursions being recorded in August alone.
The increased activity puts further stress on Taiwan's outgunned military resources, especially its aging fleet of fighter jets.
"There have been significant increases in operation maintenance in response to the cross-strait situation, as our aircraft and naval ships have been (increasingly) deployed," budgeting chief Chu Tzer-ming told reporters.
Historically, Taiwan's military has favored big-ticket purchases like fighter jets and warships.
But American and Taiwanese strategists have increasingly pushed Taipei to adopt a "porcupine" strategy of asymmetric warfare.
That strategy emphasizes purchasing comparatively inexpensive and mobile weapon systems, like anti-ship and aircraft missiles, as well as training soldiers and civilian reservists to fight behind enemy lines to make an invasion a grim prospect even for China's huge military.
The planned defense spending, which is a record high and must be approved by parliament, marks the island's sixth consecutive year of growth in defense spending since 2017.
Excluding the extra budget for military equipment and funds, the proposed defense spending represents a 12.9% year-on-year increase, compared with a 20.8% increase in the overall government budget proposed for next year.
The proposed spending accounts for 14.6% of the government's total spending for next year and is the fourth-largest spending segment, after social welfare and combined spending on education, science and culture, and economic development.
The island last year announced an extra defense budget of $8.69 billion by 2026, which came on top of its yearly military spending, mostly on naval weapons, including missiles and warships.
In March, China said it would spend 7.1% more on defense this year, setting the spending figure at 1.45 trillion yuan ($211.62 billion), though many experts suspect that is not the true figure, an assertion the government disputes.
