The White House announcement Friday of a new $345 million in military aid for the Republic of China on Taiwan is the Biden administration’s first major package drawing on America’s own stockpiles to help Taiwan counter the threat from Communist China. It did not take long to draw condemnation and more from the corridors of power at Beijing. 

Soon after the news of the aid package for Taipei broke, Beijing accused America of turning Taiwan into an “ammunition depot” and the self-ruled island said Sunday it tracked six Red Chinese navy ships in waters off its shores.

“No matter how much of the ordinary people’s taxpayer money the … Taiwanese separatist forces spend, no matter how many U.S. weapons, it will not shake our resolve to solve the Taiwan problem or shake our firm will to realize the reunification of our motherland,” Beijing’s China’s “Taiwan Affairs Office” said in a statement.

“Their actions are turning Taiwan into a powder keg and ammunition depot, aggravating the threat of war in the Taiwan Strait,” the statement added.

Taiwan’s ruling administration, led by the Democratic Progressive Party, has stepped up its weapons purchases from the U.S. as part of a deterrence strategy against a Chinese invasion.

Communist China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949, and Taiwan has never been governed by China’s ruling Communist Party.

Unlike previous military purchases, the latest batch of aid is part of a presidential authority approved by Congress last year to draw weapons from current U.S. military stockpiles — so Taiwan will not have to wait for military production and sales.The Pentagon has used a similar authority to get billions of dollars worth of munitions to Ukraine.

While Taiwan has purchased $19 billion worth of weaponry, much of it has yet to be delivered to Taiwan.

The White House said the new package would include defense, education and training for the Taiwanese. Washington will send man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS, intelligence and surveillance capabilities, firearms and missiles, according to two American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

For the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s newspaper of record, the new assistance package “is putting the United States on a warpath.” The newspaper repudiates the presumption “of even some within the US government  that mainland China is ready to invade Taiwan as if the island is already an independent country under siege.”  

Citing the package’s no-interest loans worth up to $10 billion, the newspaper’s lead political commentator, Alex Lo, wrote that “it’s one thing to sell expensive, outdated and delayed-delivery weapons to the island; it’s something else entirely handing them over for free.” 

Mr. Lo also wrote that “all countries in Asia, perhaps even around the world, really need to question the wisdom or rather blind dogmatism by which Washington is pushing the region if not the world into a global conflagration.”

Of course, the new round of assistance reflects Washington’s recognition of Communist China’s expansionist aims in the region. From brazen espionage over American skies to interference in the domestic affairs of South Pacific nations like the Solomon Islands to untoward collaboration with Russia as it presses its illegal invasion of Ukraine, it is Communist China that appears to be blazing a warpath. In that sense the new aid package represents an obstacle to belligerence. 

A new bill introduced in Congress, the Taiwan Peace Through Strength Act, will also aims to deter Beijing. According to a statement from Congressman Chris Pappas, the bill will “reinforce our nation’s support of Taiwan as the island faces the increased threat of a Chinese Communist Party military attack.”