The first batch of US-made M1A2T Abrams tanks has arrived on the island, the Taiwanese Defence Ministry said on Monday.
“Heavy Armors Have Arrived! Welcome to join us! ” the ministry said on X.
The batch of 38 M1A2T tanks, a variant of M1 Abrams, arrived in the Port of Taipei on Sunday evening, the Focus Taiwan newspaper reported.
Washington approved a $2.2 billion deal to sell 108 Abrams tanks to Taiwan in 2019 as part of the US’s efforts to strengthen Taiwan’s defences along its northern coast. Taiwan plans to receive a further 42 tanks in 2025, with the remaining 28 units set to arrive in 2026.
China, which sees the island as its integral part, has repeatedly condemned US arms exports to Taiwan, which it says fuel Taiwanese separatism.
Formal relations between China’s central government and its island province were severed in 1949 after Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang forces, were defeated in a civil war with the Communist Party of China and moved to Taiwan. Business and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s.
Since the early 1990s, the two have been in contact through non-governmental organisations the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and the Taipei-based Straits Exchange Foundation.
