The U.S. announced $345 million in military aid for Taiwan, Friday, in what is the Biden administration’s first major package drawing on America’s own stockpiles to help Taiwan counter China.

The White House’s announcement said the package would include defense, education and training for the Taiwanese. Washington will send man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS, intelligence and surveillance capabilities, firearms and missiles, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters ahead of the announcement.

U.S. lawmakers have been pressuring the Pentagon and White House to speed weapons to Taiwan.

The goals are to help it counter China and to deter China from considering attacking, by providing Taipei enough weaponry that it would make the price of invasion too high.

While Chinese diplomats protested the move, Taiwan’s trade office in Washington said the U.S. decision to pull arms and other materiel from its stores provided “an important tool to support Taiwan’s self-defense.” In a statement, it pledged to work with the United States to maintain “peace, stability and the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.”

The package is in addition to nearly $19 billion in military sales of F-16s and other major weapons systems that the U.S. has approved for Taiwan. Delivery of those weapons has been hampered by supply chain issues that started during the COVID-19 pandemic and have been exacerbated by the global defense industrial base pressures created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The difference is that this aid is part of a presidential authority approved by Congress last year to draw weapons from current U.S. military stockpiles ― so Taiwan will not have to wait for military production and sales. This gets weapons delivered faster than providing funding for new weapons.

The Pentagon has used a similar authority to get billions of dollars worth of munitions to Ukraine.

Taiwan split from China in 1949 amid civil war. Chinese President Xi Jinping maintains China’s right to take over the now self-ruled island, by force if necessary. China has accused the U.S. of turning Taiwan into a “powder keg” through the billions of dollars in weapons sales it has pledged.

The U.S. maintains a “One China” policy under which it does not recognize Taiwan’s formal independence and has no formal diplomatic relations with the island in deference to Beijing. However, U.S. law requires a credible defense for Taiwan and for the U.S. to treat all threats to the island as matters of “grave concern.”

Getting stockpiles of weapons to Taiwan now, before an attack begins, is one of the lessons the U.S. has learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Pentagon deputy defense secretary Kathleen Hicks told The Associated Press earlier this year.

Ukraine “was more of a cold-start approach than the planned approach we have been working on for Taiwan, and we will apply those lessons,” Hicks said. Efforts to resupply Taiwan after a conflict erupted would be complicated because it is an island, she said.

China regularly sends warships and planes across the center line in the Taiwan Strait that provides a buffer between the sides, as well as into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, in an effort to intimidate the island’s 23 million people and wear down its military capabilities.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, said in a statement Friday that Beijing was “firmly opposed” to U.S. military ties with Taiwan. The U.S. should “stop selling arms to Taiwan” and “stop creating new factors that could lead to tensions in the Taiwan Strait,” Liu said. (AP)

    • Snipe_AT@lemmy.atay.dev
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      1 year ago

      ? Who? China?

      edit: yooo, i just got bot downvoted by 16 on almost all my posts/comments, China mad.

        • Snipe_AT@lemmy.atay.dev
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          1 year ago

          went from like +300 fake points to -600. hurt worse than it should :’)

          edit: it’s still ongoing, every post now starts with a net -7 vote, i think i’ll start adding a disclaimer on all my new comments lol

          • vlad@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            Just ignore them. They’ve got nothing better to do while waiting in the bread line.

            • flipht@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Fuck the CCP, but the US also has bread lines. We call it food stamps and make grocery stores deal with it.

              But like 12.6% of our population (41.9 / 331.9) is on it, not counting people who don’t qualify and have to rely only on food banks, soup kitchens, etc.

              • vlad@lemmy.sdf.org
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                1 year ago

                Oh yeah, I’m in the US and it’s far from perfect. But I was born in Russia, so I can’t really complain because it’s better than being forced into a war by a Putin.

          • livus@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Must only be on your instance, it doesn’t have that from where I’m viewing you. This comment I’m replying to is at 7 upvotes and 0 downvotes.

      • livus@kbin.social
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        I don’t see how bot downvoting even works here.

        It’s not anonymous. We can literally see the usernames of everyone who downvotes you.

          • livus@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            ActivityPub is pretty transparent, so it’s publicly available in theory.

            Not sure how you get to it on Lemmy but on kbin we just look at “activity” on a comment or post and it tells us who upvoted or downvoted it.

    • BROOT@lemm.ee
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      Literally not. Most of the worlds semiconductor manufacturing happens in Taiwan and you need semiconductors for damn near anything electronic these days. China knows that and won’t risk it. Not to mention the economic hell that going to war with the US would cause.

    • EnderWi99in@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Yeah China should maybe consider not invading Taiwan. If anything it should be the other way around. Taiwan IS China. The CCP are an illegitimate government anyway.

    • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      The best defense is a capable offense. Sitting on a golden egg with your pants around your ankles is the best way to get robbed.

        • SaakoPaahtaa@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          When I joined in on this convo commies started to bot my account. It’s since stopped. Fix it you dirty commie fuck, can’t you do anything right?

          • Robaque@feddit.it
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            1 year ago

            Why tf would I have anthing to do with that?

            If you just go around calling every leftist a “dirty commie fuck” and throwing around baseless accusations it’s no wonder you pissed off someone at some point.

            But if you’re that salty, Lemmy’s upvote system is public afaik, so those downvoting bots should be traceable. I imagine that if you reach out to them they’d be very much obliged to comply with your request.