The backlash was quick after Taiwan's president, Lai Qingte, launched a wide drive this month to warn China's overthrow and spread spying.
Crossing the Taiwan Strait, Beijing collided, sending a surge in military planes and ships near the island, warning him that he was “playing on fire.” In Taiwan, Lai's opponents have dangerously criticized him in China.
However, Lai bets that, despite the threat from Beijing and the possibility that Taiwan's opposition could delve deeper into his agenda, he now bets that his supporters could take more difficult boundaries to China's influence.
Although Lai appears to have concluded that China will limit its actions against Taiwan, Beijing is focusing on trying to negotiate with President Trump on an escalating trade war, said David Sachs, a fellow at the Taiwan Relations Council.
“The best guess is that if he was trying to do this, he should do it when China doesn't want to complicate discussions with the US,” Sachs said in an interview about Lai's security measures.
Taiwan's political parties have been debating for decades about whether to try to work with the island from nearby China, which claims Taiwan is its territory, or to distance itself from the island if it is put in force if Beijing's leader decides. The competition has taken a more sharp advantage since Lai declared on March 13 that China was a “foreign hostile force” that exploited Taiwan's freedom to “dividing, destroying, destroying and destroying us from within.”
He laid out 17 steps to counterattack. This includes restoring a military court to test Taiwanese military personnel accused of espionage and other security crimes. He wants to more closely monitor Taiwanese people's contacts with China and stop what he said was the political exploitation of Beijing's religious, educational and cultural exchanges. He called for greater disclosures about Taiwanese politicians visiting China. Many such politicians belong to the opposition nationalist party.
“We have no choice but to take more aggressive steps,” Lai said.
Beijing has underestimated Mr. Lai and his Democratic Progressive Party, accusing them of being separatists. Chinese officials quickly condemned Lai's speech, particularly the use of the term “foreign hostile force.” Taiwan's opposition nationalists, who support ties with China and talks, accused Lai of unnecessary tension.
“Specifically, it's the provocation of the mainland and the Chinese Communist Party to some extent,” said Hsu Chiao-Hsin, a well-known nationalist lawmaker, in an interview. “This will cause more tension throughout the strait.”
Nationalist politicians said they would resist at least some of the measures Lai proposed. They argue that reviving the military court, which was abolished in 2013, is a betrayal after protests against soldier abuse. “Many of these 17 steps limit people's civil rights,” Mrs. HSU said.
Another nationalist party MP, Ko Chih-en, accused Lai of unfairly casting his domestic critics as Beijing's “red” tool. “You shouldn't wear a red hat like someone with a connection to China, as everyone fears.”
The rising political denunciation could, perhaps most importantly, further complicate Mr. Lai's plans, including the proposed and proposed increase in military spending aimed at softening Washington. President Trump and his team say Taiwan should sharply raise its defense budget, from 2.45% of its current budget to 10% of its economy.
Last month, Lai vowed to use an additional “special budget” later this year, pushing overall defense spending to more than 3% of the economy. However, this increase must win approval from Taiwan's parliament. There, the Taiwan People's Party, a nationalist and a small party, holds a majority.
Despite his anger at him, Lai may think Taiwan's opposition will ultimately support a planned increase in military spending, Sachs said.
“Part of the Rye calculations are that if the opposition plays a game with the proposed increase in defence spending, then I think it will attract Washington's attention in a way that they really don't want,” Sachs said.
When Taiwan's major annual budget was passed this year, the opposition parties imposed cuts and conditions that Lai's government said would hinder the government's activities. Opposition parties have said the cuts are aimed at vain spending and that Taiwan's military preparations will not be hurt by their measures.
Russell Fuciao, executive director of the Institute for Global Taiwan in Washington, said: “The opposition will have him and the ruling party pay the political price.
Raymond Chen Sung, vice president of the Prospect Foundation, a government-funded research institute in Taipei, said that even if both parties generally agree to military spending, negotiations over special budgets could be prolonged and tense. “The limited window of opportunity to accomplish this could still go away,” Son said.
Several nationalist lawmakers, including former admiral Richard Yong-Kang Chen, said they are widely supportive of an increase in military spending. But the polarized atmosphere made legislative give-and-take even more intense, Chen said. Like most opposition politicians, he blamed Mr. Rai for his impasse. Mr. Lai condemns the opposition's interference.
“If we make it tough, there's virtually no communication between the two parties right now,” Chen said of Nationalists and Lai's Democrat Progressive Party.
Lai won 40% of the vote in last year's presidential election, but his party lost a majority in Congress, resulting in frequent conflicts over Lai's initiative. The brawl broke out in Taiwan's legislative rooms, with opposition from the Kuomintang and Taiwan's People's Party protesting outside the legislative facility last year.
Wanting to weaken the opposition's grip on Congress, Lai's Democrat Progressive Party supported a recall campaign against opposition lawmakers using the rule that if members of Congress are outside the normal cycle, enough voters can face a new election. The Nationalists Party supported the recall petition against DPP lawmakers.
Ryan Huss, a Chinese and Taiwan expert at the Brookings Institute, said Ryan Huss's recent speech on China seemed to be intended to cut back on opposition. “I think it was meant to reaffirm the control of the story and put people who oppose his agenda on their hind legs,” Hass said in an interview during his visit to Taipei.
Still, he and many other experts say Taiwan is facing an increasing effort by China to illegally influence public opinion on the island, erode trust in the government and the military, and gather intelligence reports.
Lai said the growing threat from China is reflected in the data. In 2024, 64 people faced spy accusations in Taiwan, he said, three times the number of people charged with crimes in 2021.
Most of the people accused of spying are former or current members of the Taiwanese army, Lai said.
