Taiwan to boost defence spending
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.2 • 7.8K Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te says China is stepping up military preparations to take the island by force. He's announced a $40 billion supplementary defence budget that underscores Taiwan's determination to protect itself, with a focus on drones and missile systems. President Lai said giving up and making compromises to aggression would only bring war. Also: the US-Palestinian teenager who's been in detention since February for stone throwing -- with no trial in sight. The joy of discovering a rare flower in Indonesia. Two Australian teenagers go to court to challenge their government's up-coming ban on social media for under-16s. And an elderly couple enjoy a last, surprise dance on the ballroom floor.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.4 | This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:11.3 | I'm Celia Hatton and at 1600 GMT on Wednesday, the 26th of November, these are our main stories. |
| 0:19.6 | Taiwan announces an additional $40 billion in defense |
| 0:23.1 | spending. Will it be enough to deter China? Parts of southern Thailand have seen their heaviest |
| 0:28.8 | rain in 300 years and a huge swathe of the country's underwater. Two teenagers in Australia |
| 0:35.6 | are fighting the country's social media ban. |
| 0:40.7 | Also in this podcast, |
| 0:44.7 | So after 13 years of waiting, we had to travel over 20 hours on land. |
| 0:50.5 | Then we had to climb the mountain and descend the mountain for three hours. |
| 0:54.6 | Researchers in Indonesia locate one of the rarest flowers in the world. |
| 1:03.5 | Now to Taiwan, where the president, Lai Ching De, has sent Taiwan will do all it can to resist |
| 1:09.7 | Chinese aggression. |
| 1:16.9 | He's announced a plan to spend an extra $40 billion on the military over the next eight years. |
| 1:24.6 | That means by the end of the decade, Taipei will be spending more than 5% of its GDP on defense. |
| 1:28.8 | Fei Fanlind, the deputy head of Taiwan's National Security Council, |
| 1:33.1 | said the spending boost reflected the changing nature of warfare. |
| 1:38.2 | I think we must understand that the modern warfare is totally different from previous years. |
| 1:43.4 | I think the conventional or traditional warfare has already been changed so dramatically. |
| 1:48.2 | And so we must think about more asymmetric in defending ourselves. |
| 1:50.8 | I think that's a consensus also what we are building. |
| 1:56.4 | That announcement comes as China is embroiled in a dispute with Japan over Taiwan. |
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