Taiwan's Tough Call on How to Stop China: Bigger Weapons or Lots of Cheap Ones

TAIPEI—David shouldn't rely too much on slingshots to repel Goliath. He'll need plenty of tanks and jet fighters too. That is the takeaway for defense officials and scholars in Taiwan from the latest developments in Ukraine, where Kyiv has struggled to block Russian advances while waiting for allies to deliver more powerful hardware. The need for heavy weapons has been a point of contention between Taipei and Washington in discussing how Taiwan would blunt a Chinese attempt to seize the island. For more than a decade, U.S. officials have encouraged Taiwan to invest in small, relatively cheap weapons such as…