Taiwan

Taiwan: Low Debt, Elevated Military Spending Ratio, Major Economic Data Gaps

This dataset contains no figures for Taiwan's GDP, GDP per capita, population, or foreign reserves. Those gaps are not filled here with outside figures; they are simply absent from the source file and should be treated as unknown rather than assumed.

Fiscal Position

The IMF's World Economic Outlook puts Taiwanese government debt at 27.6 percent of GDP for 2026 — the lowest debt ratio among the countries in this batch, by a wide margin. No reserves figure is available to weigh against that debt position.

Military Spending

SIPRI's 2025 figures put Taiwanese military expenditure at $18.19 billion, or 2.099 percent of GDP under SIPRI's own GDP series — the second-highest ratio in this batch. Because no World Bank GDP figure is present in this dataset for Taiwan, there is no second denominator available to cross-check against; the SIPRI ratio stands as given, from SIPRI's own GDP series. Active personnel numbered 169,000 in 2022, per COW NMC, which scores Taiwan's CINC at 0.00605 for that year.

Governance

V-Dem's 2025 data scores Taiwan at 0.801 on electoral democracy and 0.704 on liberal democracy, with a state capacity score of 0.917 — all three figures rank among the higher scores in this batch.

Energy

Taiwan's primary energy consumption was 4.514 exajoules in 2024, and electricity generation reached 288.39 terawatt-hours in 2025, per Our World in Data. Domestic oil and gas production figures — 0.145 TWh and 2.994 TWh, respectively — are both dated to 2016, nearly a decade old, and should not be treated as current output levels; no more recent production data is available here.

Military Capability Context

COW NMC's CINC score of 0.00605 for Taiwan in 2022 is drawn from a composite index of military, demographic and industrial indicators, a distinct methodology from SIPRI's spending figures above and not a substitute for the missing economic-scale data.

Data Gaps

Taiwan has the thinnest economic picture of the countries in this batch: no GDP, per-capita income, population, or reserves figures are present in the source file. Governance and military data are complete and recent (2022, 2025, 2026), but any economic-scale comparison against the other countries here cannot be made from this dataset alone.

Sources: IMF WEO, SIPRI Milex, COW NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy)