In 1990, I accompanied a technology delegation to Beijing and served as the speaker of the first public seminar. From 1990 to 2000, most of the investments made by Taiwanese companies in China were only for contract processing, and it was only when the companies invested in the Yangtze River Delta that a critical change in the industry relationship occurred.
After 2000, all notebook production lines were moved to China, and the two sides of the Taiwan Strait entered a stage of "complementarity and competition." Without the production base in China, Taiwan could not receive large orders; and without the ecosystem built by Taiwanese companies, China could not have the supply chain of the electronics industry today. But since 2018, Trump has given us a wake-up call, and views of cross-strait relations have become divergent.
We have to think about these issues rationally: The political sector has its own perspective, and the technology industry has its own realistic issues. And underlying the G2 pattern are complex issues concerning semiconductors and supply chains. We must also understand that since the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and the Beijing Olympics in 2008, China has entered a new stage with the market becoming a new force driving its industry development.
China has TikTok; what does Taiwan have? What is Taiwan's national strategy in response to China's progress? The government would tell us, that most of the candidates in the year-end elections have really addressed such issues. Maybe we should start organizing our own discussions about them.
Over the years I have been involved in discussions on national strategies on many occasions. And I did give a public talk on Taiwan's national strategy recently from the perspective of a veteran analyst in the IT industry.
