Recent Publications - Tag Jessica C. Liao

Tag: Jessica C. Liao

Between Beijing and the Budget: The Domestic Realities of Taiwan’s Defense Spending Drama
June 2, 2026 — Taiwan's legislature spent six months blocking a major defense budget, then passed a scaled-down version days before the Trump-Xi summit. Jessica C. Liao and Kyle Marcrum argue why the story the US media tells is flawed... MORE

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Can the 15th Five-Year Plan Fix the People’s Liberation Army’s Procurement Bottlenecks?
January 14, 2026 — China’s newly released 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) proposal, unveiled after the Fourth Party Plenum in October 2025, not only marks Beijing’s quest to achieve the People’s Liberation Army’s goal of building a so-called world-class military by 2049. As the last major planning cycle before the 2035 benchmark for “basically achieving full modernization,” the plan also reaffirms General Secretary Xi Jinping’s core priorities: operational efficiency, technological self-reliance, and the Chinese Communist Party’s absolute command... MORE

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