SIMIC

Mr Hsu made the comments during an interview in response to President Tsai Ing-wen's recent National Day address. He focussed on the part of Ms Tsai's speech where she said: "Our position on cross-strait relations remains the same: neither our goodwill nor our commitments will change. We call for maintaining the status quo, and we will do our utmost to prevent the status quo from being unilaterally altered."

Mr Hsu said that while everyone wants peace, "China's understanding of Taiwan's 'status quo' may not be the same as that of Taiwan." He said that the different perspectives go some way to explaining China's constant incursions into Taiwan's air defence identification zone (ADIZ).

He went on to say that in terms of cross-strait economics and trade, more than 40 per cent of Taiwan's exports go to China. Meaning, should Taiwan lose China as a trade partner, the damage would be disproportionately bad for Taiwan. As such, it is in the national interest to try and reduce exports to China to around 20 per cent.

Mr Hsu also used China's "Belt and Road Initiative" as an example of how Taiwan could establish better relationships with other countries and draw in prospective trade partners, so as not to "put all our eggs in one basket."

When it comes to the government's widely promoted New Southbound Policy, Mr Hsu said the programme has shown less potential than expected at diminishing the economic power China has over Taiwan.

Based on his analysis, he said it is likely China's influence on Southeast Asian nations greatly exceeds the goodwill gestures of Taiwan.

Instead, Mr Hsu added, the nation should expand its horizons to new markets in central and eastern Europe, to countries such as the Czech Republic and Lithuania who recently donated Covid-19 vaccines to Taiwan.