Hsiao Bi-khim (Hsiao, Vice President of Taiwan)

But what we need to do is to influence those calculations, not only in complicating decisions, but also promoting the idea that keeping the status quo is in the best interest of all stakeholders around the world, including China.

We seek to maintain the status quo.

We have our differences with the Communist Party of China, especially in how government should run and the relationship of government to the people.

But the status quo has served as a stable framework for each side to pursue our own courses of development and prosperity.

And we will not provoke.

or seek to disrupt the status quo, but neither will we submit to coercion.

And we need to be clear about that, that their intention to coerce us, to threaten us, to push us into submitting to their political system will not work.

And at the same time, of course, we need to do our own work in fortifying our public will to defend, our public will to protect our cherished way of life and our freedom.

Within Taiwan, freedom didn't just fall from the sky.

People sacrificed and fought for our freedom.

We have a history of colonialism, foreign occupation.

And we have finally established the right of the Taiwanese people to determine our own future through democratic means, through elections, through the power of the vote.

And we will not give that up.

I think those numbers that you just outlined have been quite alarming.

That is why we have seen the United States and many others working to overcome some of the manufacturing and building obstacles.

working among allies and partners to ensure that a strategic balance can be maintained to keep the status quo that is so important for many of us.

But at the same time, from Taiwan's perspective,

We know we can't match them ship by ship or asset by asset, and that is why we have developed or we have focused on asymmetric capabilities.

That is, we need to be smart, innovative, and we also need to

look at our own indigenous manufacturing capabilities in developing systems that can be more effective in protecting what we so cherish.