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Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Sunday that peace across the Taiwan Strait can only be protected through strength and that Taiwan must never yield territory, as he marked the 68th anniversary of a major 1958 battle with Chinese forces.
Lai laid a wreath and bowed at a memorial park on Kinmen, a Taiwan-controlled island close to the Chinese coast, commemorating the start of the second Taiwan Strait crisis, the last large-scale battle between Taiwanese and Chinese forces.
Speaking to veterans, Lai thanked those who “stood united and fought a bloody battle to repel Communist totalitarian aggression.”
“Our resolve to unite in defending national sovereignty and safeguarding peace across the Taiwan Strait must never waver,” he said. “Peace has never simply fallen from the sky.”
Lai said the 1958 battle showed “that peace is secured through strength” and called for maintaining a spirit of “never yielding an inch” of Taiwan, Kinmen and other Taiwan-controlled islands.
He also stressed the need to continue increasing military spending.
Taiwan’s planned defense budget for next year will exceed T$1 trillion, or about $30 billion, for the first time, the government announced Thursday. Lai said he hoped the budget would receive strong support.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kinmen and Matsu have remained under Taiwan’s control since the Republic of China government fled to Taipei in 1949 after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong’s communist forces. No peace treaty or armistice has been signed.
Kinmen lies less than 2 kilometers, or 1.2 miles, from Chinese-controlled territory at its closest point.
In 1958, Chinese forces bombarded Kinmen and Matsu for more than a month, with naval and air battles also taking place in an effort to force the islands into submission.
Taiwan fought back with U.S. support, and the crisis ended in a stalemate. Taiwan marks Aug. 23 each year as the date it repelled the attack.
China considers Taiwan its territory and has repeatedly called Lai a “separatist.” Lai rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only Taiwan’s people can decide their future, while also offering talks with China.
Since early 2024, China’s coast guard has conducted regular “law enforcement” patrols around Kinmen in Taiwan-controlled waters, drawing criticism from Taipei.
Referring to those patrols and other Chinese actions, Lai said Beijing had not stopped its “ambitions for external expansion for even a single day” over the past 68 years, creating “unease” across the Indo-Pacific.
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