Thank you very much.
It's a tricky question. PRC has been the dominant, most buoyant partner for the last 30 years. By my estimate, investment into Canada from China is 600 times greater than that from Taiwan. It's whole multiple orders of magnitude greater, and that's not going to change overnight.
Taiwan has a static population. Its economic growth rates are modest, and that's actually one of the causes, in my view, of the change of government recently: dissatisfaction, particularly among young people, over economic prospects. That said, this can help, and these sorts of arrangements are much appreciated by the Taiwanese government and the Taiwanese people.
You're quite right that Taiwan is.... When in government, when I ran our office in Taiwan, we had urged Canadian companies to operate in Taiwan. Beijing is formidable in that you have dozens and dozens of large cities, and provinces that are a multiple size of countries. Taiwan is a place with considerable respect for the rule of law. Most recently, in the last 20 or 30 years, perhaps 20 years, let's say, there is respect for intellectual property rules that wasn't the case in the early days. It is the case now. It's a safe place to do business by comparison with the PRC, which has a remarkably dynamic economy but just tougher to penetrate, much more difficult. Taiwan is a nice safer way station for Canadian companies to cut their teeth.
Hong Kong, to some extent, is as well. There are maybe a couple of hundred thousand Taiwanese in Canada, and two million or more on the mainland. Most of that capital that flows out of Taiwan doesn't come to Canada or North America, it goes to China where Taiwanese companies build massive factories, particularly in the electronics consumer products industries. Partnership with a Taiwanese company can have multiplier effects if you work on a broader Asia platform, so it is attractive.
What has to be done, though, is sequencing. There was a question about a free trade agreement, for example, with Taiwan, and that's wonderful, but generally I would think that would be a risky exercise if you hadn't already concluded one with China. China does watch very carefully. Right now, thanks to President Ma Ying-jeou, we're at the end, perhaps, of a honeymoon period between Taipei and Beijing. Already just based on the commentaries generated by President-elect Trump, we're seeing a stiffening of Chinese attitudes towards Taiwan. I don't know if that will continue or not, but I'd say there's a prospect that this will be the case.
So yes, do business with Taiwan, but keep an eye on Beijing, because they have a relevance to what you can get away with and what you can do in Taiwan.