Taiwan’s Parliament Finally Passes Drone Bill to Back Hedgehog Strategy
There are also questions regarding the bill’s constitutionality. According to one interpretation of the constitution, the parliament can’t add budget items to the regular budget. Cho has refused to countersign several previous bills for this exact reason, setting up a constitutional fight. However, since early last year the constitutional court has been unable to function due to quorum restrictions put in place by the opposition parties.
The fight over drone funding itself also goes back further. In November, Lai proposed to include it in a broader special defense budget worth T$1.25 trillion. The opposition kept only funding for foreign procurement, cutting the total to T$780 billion. This meant there would be no money for domestic drone acquisition. It argued that funding for domestic procurement should come from the regular annual budget, where the parliament could maintain oversight.
The cabinet came back in June to propose a standalone special budget just for drones, and the opposition parties countered with their own versions where funding would be included in the regular budget.
Finally, the opposition parties pushed through their version on Thursday, the legislature’s last sitting day of the current session and close to the local elections in November. The KMT evidently didn’t want to go to those elections with a fight over defense hanging over it. Increased defense spending is generally popular. An INDSR poll in May put support for the government’s proposed special defense budget at 62 percent.
Pressure from Washington helped too. KMT chair Cheng Li-wun was repeatedly questioned on the subject during a trip to the United States in June, and towards the end of it she announced the KMT’s proposal, the one that has just passed the parliament. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu of the KMT led a bipartisan delegation to the US weeks later for talks that also touched on drones specifically. A bipartisan US congressional delegation returned the favour in Taipei in early August, pressing Lai and the opposition directly on drone procurement.
Some commentators read the opposition’s earlier resistance less charitably: as expressions of the KMT’s – and especially Cheng’s – reluctance to look confrontational towards Beijing.
President Donald Trump looms in the background, too. He is due to host President Xi Jinping in September, and Taipei is always worried that he may make unhelpful comments, as he did in May 2025, when he called a defense package for Taiwan a ‘bargaining chip’.
Although Lai is unlikely to be happy, some analysts have called the approved bill a step in the right direction, albeit a small one. Taiwan’s drone industry has been growing, but mainly due to foreign demand from Ukraine and the Middle East. Taiwan wants the industry, like the semiconductor sector, to be a pillar of the economy and promote the island’s relevance. Just T$40 billion a year isn’t a big step towards achieving that, however.
The bill’s passage shows that Taiwan’s polarized politics can still pass major legislation, given enough electoral and US pressure. Apparently, the pressure of the enormous military threat from China wasn’t enough.
Thijs Stegeman is a PhD candidate researching cross-strait politics and Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific at National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. He is the author of The Taiwan Desk, a weekly Substack on Taiwanese politics. This article is published courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
