After months of gridlock, Taiwan's Legislative Yuan passes a multi-year special defence budget of NT$780bn — substantially more than the opposition's initial NT$380bn counter-proposal, and roughly 38% below the NT$1.25tn the executive had sought to fund US procurement, domestic industry and an integrated air-defence programme.
Why it mattersThis is what deterrence looks like when it runs through a democracy: contested, reduced and slow. The outcome is neither the collapse some reporting implied nor the commitment the executive sought, and the more informative indicator from here is execution — what is actually contracted and spent — rather than the headline figure.