After Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, launched a broad drive this month against what he warned was expanding Chinese subversion and spying, the backlash was swift.
Across the Taiwan Strait, Beijing hit back, sending a surge of military planes and ships near the island and warning that he was “playing with fire.” In Taiwan, Mr. Lai’s opponents accused him of dangerously goading China.
But Mr. Lai is wagering that he can — and, his supporters say, must — take a harder line against Chinese influence now, notwithstanding the threats from Beijing and the possibility that Taiwan’s opposition parties will dig in deeper against his agenda.
Mr. Lai appears to have concluded that China will limit its actions against Taiwan while Beijing focuses on trying to negotiate with President Trump over the escalating trade war, said David Sacks, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who monitors Taiwanese affairs.
“The best guess is that he assessed that, if he was going to do this, he should do it at a time when China doesn’t want something to complicate its discussions with the United States,” Mr. Sacks, in an interview, said of Mr. Lai’s security steps.
Taiwan’s political parties have for decades argued over whether to try to work with or distance the island from neighboring China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, to be taken by force if Beijing leaders so decide. The contention has taken on a sharper edge since Mr. Lai declared on March 13 that China was a “foreign hostile force” exploiting Taiwan’s freedoms to “divide, destroy, and subvert us from within.”
He laid out 17 steps to fight back, including restoring military courts to try Taiwanese military personnel accused of espionage and other security crimes. He wants to more closely monitor Taiwanese people’s contacts with China to stop what he said was Beijing’s political exploitation of religious, educational and cultural exchanges. He demanded greater disclosure about Taiwanese politicians who visit China. Many such politicians belong to the opposition Nationalist Party.
“We have no choice but to take even more proactive measures,” Mr. Lai said.
Beijing despises Mr. Lai and his Democratic Progressive Party, accusing them of being separatists. Chinese officials quickly denounced Mr. Lai’s speech, especially his use of the term “foreign hostile force.” Taiwan’s opposition Nationalist Party, which favors ties and talks with China, accused Mr. Lai needlessly fanning tensions.
“Specifically singling out mainland China and the Chinese Communist Party is to some degree a provocation,” Hsu Chiao-hsin, a prominent Nationalist lawmaker, said in an interview. “This will trigger even more tensions across the strait.”
Nationalist politicians said they would resist at least some of Mr. Lai’s proposed steps. They argue that reinstating military courts, which were abolished in 2013 after protests over abuses of soldiers, is backsliding. “Many of these 17 steps restrict people’s civil rights,” Mrs. Hsu said.
Ko Chih-en, another Nationalist Party legislator, accused Mr. Lai of unfairly casting his domestic critics as “red” tools of Beijing. “Don’t make it like anyone with any connection to China is given a red hat so that everyone is in fear.”
The rising political acrimony could further complicate Mr. Lai’s plans, including perhaps most crucially a proposed increase in military spending meant to mollify Washington. President Trump and his team have said that Taiwan should sharply raise its defense budget, to as much as 10 percent of its economy, up from the current budgeted 2.45 percent.
Mr. Lai vowed last month to use an additional “special budget” later this year to push overall defense spending to more than 3 percent of the economy. But the increase must win approval from Taiwan’s legislature, where the Nationalists and a smaller party, the Taiwan People’s Party, hold a majority.
Mr. Lai may be thinking that despite their anger at him, Taiwan’s opposition parties will ultimately back the planned increase in military spending, Mr. Sacks said.
“I think that part of Lai’s calculus is also that if the opposition played games with his proposed defense spending increase, that would get Washington’s attention in a way they really don’t want,” Mr. Sacks said.
When Taiwan’s main annual budget passed this year, the opposition imposed cuts and conditions that Mr. Lai’s government said would hamper government operations. The opposition parties have said the cuts were aimed at wasteful spending, and Taiwan’s military preparedness would not be hurt by their measures.
“My sense is that President Lai will eventually be able to get a special budget passed by the legislature, but at some political costs,” said Russell Hsiao, the executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington. “The opposition parties will make him and the ruling party pay a political price, even though, eventually, they will go along with it — in part because they know that Washington is paying close attention.”
Negotiations over the special budget could be protracted and tense, even if both sides generally agree on more military spending, said Raymond Cheng-en Sung, the vice president of the Prospect Foundation, a government-funded institute in Taipei. “The limited window of opportunity that we have for getting this done could still vanish,” Mr. Sung said.
Several Nationalist lawmakers, including Richard Yeong-Kang Chen, a former admiral, said they broadly supported a rise in military spending. But the polarized atmosphere made legislative give-and-take harder, Mr. Chen said. Like most opposition politicians, he blamed Mr. Lai for the impasse. Mr. Lai’s side blames obstruction by the opposition parties.
“Putting it harshly, there’s virtually no communication now between the two parties,” Mr. Chen said of the Nationalists and Mr. Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party.
Mr. Lai won 40 percent of the vote in the presidential election last year, but his party lost its majority in the legislature, resulting in frequent standoffs over Mr. Lai’s initiatives. Brawls have broken out in Taiwan’s legislative chamber, and opponents of the Nationalist Party and Taiwan People’s Party staged protests outside the legislative building last year.
Hoping to weaken the opposition parties’ grip on the legislature, Mr. Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party has backed a recall campaign against opposition lawmakers, using a rule that members of the legislature can face fresh elections, outside of the usual cycle, if enough voters sign petitions. The The Nationalist Party has, in turn, backed recall petitions against D.P.P. lawmakers.
Mr. Lai’s recent speech on China appeared partly intended to sharpen the contrast with the opposition, said Ryan Hass, an expert on China and Taiwan at the Brookings Institution. “I think it was intended to reassert control of the narrative, to put people who are opposing his agenda on the back foot,” Mr. Hass said in an interview while visiting Taipei.
Still, he and many other experts say Taiwan does face growing efforts by China to illicitly influence public opinion on the island, erode confidence in its government and military forces, and to collect intelligence.
Mr. Lai said the growing threat from China was reflected in the data: 64 people faced charges of espionage in Taiwan in 2024, he said, three times the number charged with the offense in 2021.
Most of those accused of spying, Mr. Lai said, were former or current members of Taiwan’s armed forces.
