\u200bTaiwan President Lai Ching-te on Wednesday urged the opposition-controlled parliament to pass his $40 billion \u200bspecial defence budget, which has been stalled by lawmakers, \u200bsaying given the \u2060rising threat level strengthening the military cannot wait. Lai last year proposed \u200bthe defence boost \u200cto counter China, which views the island as its own territory. But parliament has instead \u200badvanced its own, less expensive proposals, which only fund some U.S. weapons. The main opposition party Kuomintang (KMT), whose vice chairman visited Beijing \u200clast \u200cweek, said it \u200bsupports defence spending but will not sign “blank cheques” and has a right to fully scrutinise the legislation, blaming Lai for the impasse. Speaking to \u200breporters at the presidential office, Lai said he had never asked lawmakers to pass the spending unconditionally, reiterating that the government \u200bwas happy to provide detailed explanation on its plans. “I want to emphasise: political parties may compete, and po<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u200bTaiwan President Lai Ching-te on Wednesday urged the opposition-controlled parliament to pass his $40 billion \u200bspecial defence budget, which has been stalled by lawmakers, \u200bsaying given the \u2060rising threat level strengthening the military cannot wait. Lai last year proposed \u200bthe defence boost \u200cto counter China, which views the island as its own territory. But parliament […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n