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

You know, think about this.

We're, you know, a small country, but we are making the largest single greenfield investment in American history.

And that will contribute to technology resilience,

to the diversification of supply chains, and we do want to deepen those ties.

Taiwanese have benefited from American innovation, research, design, development, and we also

depend on the American market.

So we do want to be well integrated with reliable and trusted partners from the economic perspective.

Well, it's an unfortunate situation that only

Eleven countries recognize Taiwan in a diplomatic context.

And we lost Honduras a couple years ago.

They made all kinds of claims, such as a huge Chinese market buying more goods from Honduras.

But I think the Hondurans have discovered that instead of making more money off the Chinese market, the Chinese trade surplus over Honduras has only widened.

and some of their export markets are running into some significant challenges.

But I think the Chinese tend to use multiple tools of coercion plus economic incentives or promises that they may or may not keep once countries switch their allegiance or diplomatic ties.

So, you know, we want to keep these

partners standing with Taiwan in the Americas.

In Latin America, our sole partner is Paraguay.

In Central America, it's Guatemala, Belize, and a few Caribbean islands who still recognize and stand with Taiwan.

And we want to work with them on, you know, economic partnerships, on public health, on, you know,

empowering small, medium-sized enterprises on continuing growth.