When US President Joe Biden recently signed off on a $80m (£64.6m) grant to Taiwan for the purchase of American military equipment, China said it “deplores and opposes” what Washington had done. While fury is Beijing’s default response to any military support for Taiwan, this time something was different. This money came from American taxpayers. For the first time in more than 40 years, America is using its own money to send weapons to a place it officially doesn’t recognize. This is happening under a program called foreign military finance (FMF).

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