‘Ukrainian strategy has become a model’: Taiwanese beef up military to face China threat

A soldier helps a child to aim and shoot at an army recruitment event in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Photograph: Ann Wang/Reuters

For many people in Taiwan, the threat of conflict with China is a distant prospect that has been lingering in the air for some seven decades. Concern in the west that the Chinese Communist party, led by Xi Jinping in Beijing, is moving ever closer towards attempting to realise its goal of “reunifying” China and Taiwan, by force if necessary, can seem hysterical.

The only beneficiary of the increasing tension between China and Taiwan is the US, which is making money from selling arms to Taipei, jokes one resident of Kinmen, a small Taiwanese island a few miles from China’s eastern coastline.