Ryan Hass On Taiwan: Taiwan’s Strengthening Position in a Shifting Asia

I recently traveled to Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, and Taipei as part of an annual trip organized by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. Across these cities, senior officials, policy advisors, and experts shared differing perspectives on the region’s future. One conclusion stood out: Taiwan enters the coming years from a position of growing strength.

Taiwan’s economy is booming, public confidence is rising, and fears of an imminent military crisis appear to be lessening. Even so, Beijing remains committed to its long-term goal of unification across the Taiwan Strait and is gaining strength in pursuit of this objective. Taiwan therefore has ample reason for optimism, but not for complacency.

Meetings with officials and experts in Shanghai and Beijing presented a duality. On one hand, Chinese interlocutors felt confident in their ability to maintain stable relations with President Donald Trump. There was a pervasive sense of satisfaction that Trump had adopted China’s preferred framing on cross-Strait issues and embraced a shared concept for the US-China relationship: comprehensive strategic stability based on fairness, reciprocity, and mutual respect. Although nobody could clearly define what practical commitments the concept entails, they generally suggested that it meant both leaders accepted the imperative of stabilizing bilateral relations and avoiding confrontations.

At the same time, China’s economy appears to be showing signs of stress. The contrast between China’s economy and Taiwan’s was difficult to miss. While Chinese counterparts spoke openly about slowing growth, weak employment prospects for younger workers, and mounting fiscal pressures, Taiwan officials and experts described their economy as benefiting from unprecedented demand for advanced computing products that Taiwan’s firms produce. Major global technology companies continue expanding their presence in Taiwan, strengthening Taiwan’s position at the center of the global technology ecosystem.

On cross-Strait relations, Chinese officials signaled broad confidence that the balance of power was tilting in Beijing’s direction. They touted peaceful and integrated development as the right strategy for pulling Taiwan closer to the mainland, and they rejected any notion that China’s leaders feel any urgency to resolve cross-Strait differences on any fixed timeline or deadline.

In Tokyo, Japanese officials and experts are grappling with how to navigate a changed international order. Facing simultaneous strategic stresses from Russia, North Korea, and China, and dealing with the economic fallout of war in Iran, Japanese counterparts were candid about their need to adapt to a world the United States no longer leads. They made clear their continuing commitment to the US-Japan alliance, while also emphasizing their need to enhance their strategic position by strengthening relations with other democratic partners. Without the cohesion afforded by a shared strategic outlook, US and Japanese officials appear to be looking for concrete issues to anchor the alliance. Co-production of armaments and drones appears to be an area of shared interest and common purpose.

In Taipei, trendlines appeared broadly favorable. With overall growth expected to exceed 11 percent this year, Taiwan’s economy is the envy of the world. Growth from the AI boom is spreading to other areas of the economy, including manufacturing. According to polling from Taiwan Sentiment Tracker, roughly half of respondents feel the economy is good or fairly good. Few, if any, other advanced economies around the world enjoy such broad optimism. This uptick in public sentiment has fed into Taiwan’s politics, giving a tailwind to the Democratic Progressive Party.

Even as many experts anticipated that PRC pressure on Taiwan will intensify if President William Lai (賴清德) wins reelection in 2028, there did not appear to be the same sharpness of concern about risk of conflict as in recent years. Part of this may be due to perceptions in Taipei that China’s military purges and its economic headwinds lower the risk of Beijing launching an imminent military assault on Taiwan. This was not a uniform view. KMT leaders past and present also warned that Beijing’s patience is not limitless and cross-Strait dynamics are growing more dangerous.

My overall takeaways from these exchanges are that Taiwan’s overall position is strengthening and the public’s optimism is warranted. With nominal GDP per capita nearly three times that of the mainland, roughly 20 percent higher than Japan’s, and just slightly above South Korea’s, the people of Taiwan are riding a boom.

The best ways to extend this boom will be by maintaining moderation on cross-Strait issues, exercising pragmatism at home to advance cross-partisan solutions to societal challenges, and deepening Taiwan’s links with the rest of the world.

Beijing may be facing challenges, but it is far from paralyzed. China is adding monthly to its military inventory. Its economy is growing. The number of advanced technological sectors it dominates is expanding. Nobody should be under any illusion that Beijing lacks the capacity to make progress toward its eventual goals in the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing’s likely strategy in the coming years will be less about a military showdown than persistent pressure. It will seek to deepen cross-Strait economic links, amplify doubts about American reliability, diminish Taiwan’s connections to other countries, and gradually expand administrative control over Taiwan’s surrounding waters and airspace. Viewed in isolation, none of these steps would tip the balance in the Taiwan Strait. Taken together over time, they could steadily shift the strategic environment in Beijing’s favor.

Taiwan enters this period in a strong position, with a dynamic economy, an increasingly central role in the global economy, and a democratic system that continues to deliver progress. Those strengths justify confidence.

Yet confidence should not lead to complacency. Technological leadership will not last forever. Additionally, Beijing’s ambitions are undiminished and its capacity to pursue them is growing, not lessening.

The challenge for Taiwan’s leaders, therefore, is not simply to manage today’s success. It is to use this period of progress to lay the groundwork for the future by diversifying engines of economic growth, spreading the benefits of the boom more broadly across society, strengthening deterrence, and deepening ties with countries around the world.

Taiwan’s momentum is real. The task now is to make it lasting.

Ryan Hass is a senior fellow, the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies, and director of the China Center at the Brookings Institution.