President Lai emphasizes preparedness as key to cross-strait peace

Taipei, Nov. 29 (CNA) President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) on Saturday said Taiwan needs to "build its own strength" to maintain cross-straits peace and stay prepared for a Chinese invasion.

Lai made the remarks while taking questions from high school students at a forum in Taipei hosted by the magazine Business Today.

One of the students asked Lai about the relationship between strengthening defense and maintaining peace, following Lai's proposal of a NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.47 billion) supplementary defense budget proposal on Wednesday.

He said that while Taiwan hopes to interact peacefully with China, it first needs to be able to protect its own interests, hence the need to boost defense budget, economic resilience and ties with other democracies.

"If a nation lacks the strength to defend its own interests and merely accepts an aggressor's demands, it can never attain true peace," Lai said.

When asked by another student if China would actually attack, Lai did not answer directly, saying only that Taiwan needed to be prepared for all possibilities.

According to Lai, the special defense budget would fund the construction of a multilayered "T-Dome" air defense network and strengthen Taiwan's defense industry.

The proposal was welcomed by the United States, but criticized by both the main opposition Kuomintang and the Taiwan People's Party, which argued it would rely heavily on debt financing and would lead to funding cuts to social welfare, education and other programs.