Taiwan's military said Saturday that it will continue its efforts to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability in the face of a growing threat from China, in response to the US Department of Defense's annual report on China's military developments.
In the 2015 report to Congress on military and security developments involving China, the US Pentagon noted that Taiwan's military spending has dropped to approximately 2% of its GDP, while China's official defense budget has grown to roughly 10 times that of Taiwan's.
China's official defense budget for 2014 was US$136.3 billion, while Taiwan's defense budget for the same period stood only at US$10.3 billion, the report said.
Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense spokesman Major General Luo Shou-he, in response, said that although the defense budget is below 3% of its GDP, the government will allocate special funds to pay for major arms acquisition programs should there be any.
Read the full story at Want China Times