Civic groups took to the streets outside Taiwan's Legislative Yuan in a direct challenge to leader Lai Ching-te's $40 billion special arms-purchase budget and his proposal to push defense spending to 5 percent of GDP.
The rally on November 28, 2025 brought together several civic organizations, among them the Labor Party, who framed the procurement package as an open-ended commitment that would lock in years of budget pressure while delivering little in the way of public benefit.
The scale of the ask explains the anger. Five percent of GDP would place Taiwan far above NATO's benchmark and among the heaviest-spending states anywhere, in a self-governing island whose fiscal room is already stretched.
Lai has argued that the buildup is unavoidable, pointing to Beijing's military pressure and to demands from Washington that Taipei carry more of its own defense burden.
For now the budget fight is unresolved, and the same fault line that filled the streets outside the legislature runs straight through it: how much deterrence Taiwan can afford, and how much it can afford to give up to pay for it.