It is mainly about power. The KMT controls the legislature but not the presidency or the courts, so it’s using that position to challenge the branches of government it does not hold. Blocking or reducing defence spending is part of that wider contest.

There’s a tactical layer too. The KMT and the other opposition party, the Taiwan People’s Party, held up the budget for over six months, then passed a reduced version only shortly before KMT chair Cheng Li-wun, who took over the party in October, travelled to the USA on a trip meant to soften her image as a pro-China hardliner. The party maintains it does not oppose defence spending as such, only that the government requires closer oversight.

But underneath all of this, there is something more ideological. The KMT argues that the real threat to peace is not the budget cuts but the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which defends Taiwan’s separate sovereignty and leans towards independence. For the KMT, it’s the DPP that provokes Beijing by refusing to accept there is ‘one China’, with Taiwan forming part of a single Chinese nation.

China has always been a threat to us, both externally and internally. It cultivates allies within the KMT and works to widen our political divisions to weaken any serious defence effort. That was clear when KMT chair Cheng Li-wun visited Beijing shortly before her US trip and met Chinese President Xi Jinping. She told him that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China and joined him in opposing Taiwanese independence.

So, when the KMT weakens defence spending, many people worry this makes it easier for China to take Taiwan by force. The party’s record reinforces that concern. Ma Wen-chun, who co-chairs the legislature’s defence committee, has faced accusations of leaking details of our domestic submarine programme to China. The KMT has also repeatedly voted down motions condemning Chinese aggression, such as one that condemned a plot by a Chinese official to ram a vehicle into Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s motorcade in Prague. It also voted down a motion objecting to China’s new ‘ethnic unity law’, which allows Beijing to pursue anyone it accuses of undermining ‘ethnic unity’, a category that could readily be stretched to include supporters of Taiwanese independence.

Yes, these protests follow two years of demonstrations.

In 2024, the KMT-controlled legislature sought to drastically expand legislative powers to include new powers of investigation, which led many to fear they could be used against political dissidents. The resulting demonstrations were known as the Bluebird Movement and were the largest set of protests in Taiwan since the 2014 Sunflower Movement.

The following year, after the expansion of legislative powers was ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court, the KMT moved to freeze the Constitutional Court through new legislation. It also cut a third of the government’s operational funding, including defence spending, as part of a move to paralyse government. In response, the public organised the Great Recall Movement, seeking to remove KMT legislators from office. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

It is difficult to say. The KMT might allow more defence spending to soften its image before the 2028 election, or hardliners might prevail, hoping to win Beijing’s favour and strengthen their chances of securing the party’s presidential nomination. Much also depends on the USA, where the Trump administration has been treating arms sales to Taiwan as a bargaining chip in its dealings with China.

What’s clear is that these protests are part of a rising wave, not an isolated event. Each round of KMT overreach in the legislature has triggered a bigger backlash than the last. Given how closely these movements have tracked election cycles, I expect the odds of another major mobilisation to keep rising as the presidential race approaches, just as happened between 2008 and 2014.