“Taiwan cherishes peace, but we will not give up our freedom,” Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Saturday in a National Day speech, as the island faces increased military and political pressure from China. Lai said Taiwan’s people have a right to exist and that boosting defenses isn’t a provocation.
Peace on the terms of power
Lai said Taiwan is open to exchanges but won’t accept subordination. He described increased defense investment as a way to deter war, not provoke it. “We are strengthening our self-defence not to abandon dialogue, but to ensure that dialogue can take place on the basis of parity and dignity,” he said.
The call for dialogue comes against a record of rejected talks and military pressure. China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control, calls Lai a “separatist” and has rebuffed his offers of talks. China views the island as its territory, a breakaway province or territory to be retaken by force if necessary, according to the reports. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Lai’s speech.
Taiwan has operated with its own government since 1949. It’s ramping up defense spending and modernising its armed forces while facing China’s much larger military, adding advanced weapons that include stealth fighter jets, aircraft carriers and a large array of missiles. The speech offers no easy way out of the security bind: Taiwan says its arms are intended to deter attack, while the neighboring state hasn’t ruled out force.
Lai said peace can’t rest on “wishes.” He framed Taiwan’s resolve as a matter not only of survival in the face of “authoritarian expansion,” but also of whether the international community believes force cannot override rules or strip people of their right to determine their future.
Arms, alliances and the machinery of deterrence
Lai welcomed the United States and China managing their competition through dialogue and reducing the risk of conflict and war. He urged Indo-Pacific democracies to join forces. “Democracies in the Indo-Pacific must join forces to ensure the status quo of peace and stability in the region is not changed,” he said.
The major powers’ dialogue has its own limits. In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping told his U.S. counterpart he hoped the United States would adhere to “the correct position of opposing ‘Taiwan independence’” during his visit to Washington. China has pressed Washington to halt arms sales to Taiwan, most prominently during a May summit in Beijing between Trump and Xi. After that meeting, a record $14 billion arms package to the island stalled.
China held war games around Taiwan in 2024, shortly after Lai’s first National Day speech as president; it didn’t do so last year. China’s last war games near Taiwan came in late December, after news of an $11-billion U.S. arms deal for Taipei, described as the largest ever. The pattern leaves the island between competing state and military powers, with weapons and exercises speaking alongside official claims of peace.
A ceremony framed by rival claims
Taiwan’s National Day marks the anniversary of a 1911 uprising that led to the overthrow of China’s last imperial dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China. The Republican government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists; the Republic of China remains the island’s formal name. China and Taiwan have been governed separately since that civil war brought the Communist Party to power in Beijing and defeated Nationalist Party forces fled to Taiwan.
Foreign guests included Eswatini King Mswati III and Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith of the U.S. Indiana state, who offered congratulations in Taiwan, Lai’s office said. Eswatini is Taiwan’s only diplomatic ally in Africa. A Japanese parliamentary delegation also visited and joined the celebration. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi angered Beijing last November by saying a hypothetical Chinese military action against Taiwan would constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan that would justify Japanese troop engagement.