The Taiwanese Army has historically received the least amount of funding out of the Taiwanese Armed Forces' three main service branches. With a yearly budget of only $19 billion (in 2023), the Taiwanese Ministry of Defence (MoD) is forced to prioritise investments in the country's air force and navy to have some chance in keeping up with China's rapid military build-up. As the Taiwanese Army will enter combat only after Chinese forces have already landed on Taiwan or one of the various island groups off China's coast, the priority for the Taiwanese Armed Forces has been to establish a viable deterrent and realistic wartime capabilities through the acquisition of weapons systems like fighter jets, anti-ship missiles and air defence systems to deter China from carrying out an amphibious landing in the first place.

  

After decades of bidding for peace, Japan is now once more preparing for the possibility of war, for the first time truly introducing offensive capabilities to the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) and installing long-range anti-ship missiles on islands near Taiwan. Despite its post-Cold War hopes of diplomatically resolving its territorial conflicts, it now finds itself perched at the edge of an increasingly assertive China and Russia (which still occupies four of Japan's southernmost Kuril Islands) and a nuclear-capable North Korea. As part of its attempts to strengthen its military posture, Japan is also seeking to increase the capabilities of Asian countries against Chinese interference and enhance sea surveillance, most notably the Philippines and Malaysia.

By Stijn Mitzer and Joost Oliemans

The People's Socialist Republic of Albania was a Marxist-Leninist one party state that existed from 1946 until 1991. Throughout much of its existence, the country was led by Enver Hoxha, who ruled Albania by establishing a Stalinist style of governance known as Hoxhaism. Despite far-reaching similarities with North Korea, Albania and its authoritarian ruler arguably constitute a forgotten chapter of the Cold War period. Albania's close ties with the Soviet Union until the Albanian–Soviet split in 1961, then with China until the Sino-Albanian split in 1978 and ultimately its almost complete international isolation from 1978 onwards had a profound effect on the equipment inventory and operational readiness of the Albanian People's Army (UPSh). To this day, the UPSh remains the only European military to have been mostly equipped with Chinese-made weaponry, aircraft, ships and other equipment.