Taipei, Taiwan — Taiwan’s president-elect has named new foreign and defense ministers to join his incoming administration as the island faces continued military threats and diplomatic isolation from China.
Lai Ching-te, who will assume the presidency on May 20, announced on Thursday that current presidential secretary-general Lin Chia-lung will take over as foreign minister.
He said Wellington Koo will head the Defense Ministry at a time when Taiwan is upgrading its defenses against China with new ships, submarines, fighter jets, missile systems and other land defenses.
In addition to escalating its threat to forcibly annex Taiwan, China has reduced the number of Taiwan’s formal diplomatic allies to just 12, while excluding it from the United Nations and most other international organizations.
Koo, a lawyer, has headed the National Security Council under current President Tsai Ing-wen, who leaves office per term after two four-year terms. He will be replaced in the high-profile role by current Foreign Minister Joseph Wu.
Taiwan has a long tradition of civilians serving as defense ministers, in contrast to China’s practice of appointing senior generals who have adopted an increasingly bellicose attitude toward Taiwan, the United States and asserting China’s territorial claims in the South and East China Seas.
Lin previously served as mayor of Taiwan’s largest city, Taichung, and was put in charge of Taiwan’s economic outreach to Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Both Lin and Koo are members of the Democratic Progressive Party, with which China has cut contacts over its refusal to recognize Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over the island.
Lai handily won the presidential election in January, although the main opposition Nationalist Party, which backs eventual unification with China, won a one-vote majority in the legislature.
Taiwan has a mix of presidential and parliamentary systems and a lot of power is also vested in local city and county governments. The formula emerged after Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists moved their government to the former Japanese colony of Taiwan in 1949, when Mao Zedong’s Communists seized power on the mainland after a decades-long civil war.