TAIWAN: THE TECHNOLOGY OF FREEDOM

Speech to the Taiwan Institute for National Defence and Security Research.

Thank you for welcoming me to Taipei today. Standing here, in a city striving at the forefront of innovation, even as it upholds Chinese traditions and Taiwanese culture, I'm reminded of what Hu Shih once wrote to commemorate the birthday of Confucius: “Confidence is simply the courage to affirm an unknown future.”

Once, that confidence was created by revolutionary moments like May Fourth, 1919. Movements that pointed to a new beginning. Today, what's going on across the Straits is not affirming confidence but spreading doubt.

Young people in the People's Republic of China are increasingly rejecting the CCP's hollow bargain of prosperity for compliance.

Not here. You are building a different future. Building on the past you show how a society can embrace tradition and innovation; how it can preserve its heritage and adapt its culture -- all while driving technological advances that are touching every corner of the globe. Not just in chips, and not just today.

The Republic of China's representative on the international panel codifying the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, showed that a lifetime ago.

While the diplomat and playwright PC Chang brings joy to my daughter through the story of Mulan, it's his words in the UN treaty that will protect her future.

He was key to including the rights of life, liberty, and security; the right not to be held in slavery or subjected to torture; the right to freedom of religion; and the right to freedom of thought. These are, of course, an expression of long-held Chinese, and now Taiwanese values. He made them universal.

Chang’s history is also a reminder of the cost of failure. He helped rebuild a world that had been torn apart by great power competition, greed, and nationalism. His memory is a warning of what we must avoid.

There is no need to follow that path, we can walk a different one, one that you, here already tread. Of cooperation and innovation improving the lives of billions, but only if we keep vigilant, peaceful preparation to avoid misunderstandings.

That's why I am so pleased to be here with you today. The work you are doing at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research is essential to keeping us all free by convincing others not to make the mistakes of the past.

Let me start by saying: thank you.

Those two words are too rarely used when addressing Taiwan.

As the United Kingdom's Security Minister, I saw clearly what Chairman Xi's interference in our domestic affairs means for us, many thousands of miles away. The intimidation of our citizens and our universities, the undermining of our businesses and the theft of their intellectual property, are all serious attempts to undermine our future.

When I was the first serving UK cabinet minister to meet a Taiwanese minister, I was struck by how much more persistent and determined these same assaults were on you and it would be easy to get disheartened by the imbalance between the attacker and the attacked.

But balance doesn't work like that.

As a soldier, I was always struck that military economics are not the same as maths.

The latest military equipment, the size of a fleet, the range of a missile, can make an outcome look inevitable, but what can look one-sided rarely is -- just ask President Zelenskyy of Ukraine who doesn't have the luxury of a 100-mile moat around his country.

Scale does not dwarf courage.

Reach, power, and range are not the same as endurance, will, and determination. And the reality is that technology, properly understood, is a democratising force. It equalises and empowers.

Rudyard Kipling gave us this warning a century ago -- and it echoed in my mind on patrols in Helmand -- when he wrote in his poem Arithmetic on the Frontier that: "Two thousand pounds of education, Drops to a ten-rupee jezail".

Today's technology is not the barrel of a rifleman and the skill of an Afghan, but the genius of a chip-maker and the talent of a Ukrainian drone pilot. That is the latest iteration of democratising force in war.

Russian armour -- costing billions and built up over decades -- is being turned into scrap by technology costing pennies and created last week.

Not for the first time, Taiwan's technological innovation is proving a democratising, empowering force that can't be constrained or held back.

A century ago, Hu Shih recognised that you can’t freedom. "The only way to have democracy is to have democracy," he argued.

Hu Shih didn't have time for the elitism of those who wouldn't allow others access to reading. While others tried to control the essential technology of the day, he transformed language and turned his people from subjects into citizens.

That was the foundation for the intellectual explosion we have seen here on this island. And it caused revolutions.

Today we're seeing two more.

The first is happening not far from here. As former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd shows in his latest book, Xi Jinping's "Marxist nationalism" is a shift away from his predecessors' increasing openness and instead combines authoritarian control with a nationalist rhetoric.

The second is right here on the island. On the 101st anniversary of China's historic May Fourth Movement, Matthew Pottinger noted, we're witnessing not a political uprising, but a revolution in expectations and a Chinese enlightenment here in Taipei. That's the technological revolution that Taiwan leads through its semiconductor industry and its open, ideas-led culture.

These forces are pulling in opposite directions.

Xi's vision is to concentrate power so the Red Princes keep control.

Morris Chang's, and now CC Wei's, vision is to distribute power and share it with billions around the world.

This inward, controlling shift is against everyone's interests, even China's. We know that because we've seen this happen in the past. Just at the moment when China could have dominated global trade after Admiral Zheng He had shown the way, Emperor Zhengtong ordered the ships to be burned. That allowed others to advance and develop technologies that saw China slip back.

Today, Taiwan is emulating the admiral while Xi's plan for a Dual Circulation Economy has echoes of the isolated emperor.

The Republic of China is the real people's republic now. It is where people can build their own future and where freedom is forged.

The CCP doesn't understand this. Its top-down approach fundamentally misses how innovation works. You can't innovate by decree. And their own citizens see it.

I've watched how the Chinese Communist Party has tried to direct ideas by sheer force of will and massive investment. But as Lao Tzu wrote, "When the best leader's work is done, the people say: we did it ourselves."

Instead of feeling proud, people can see the sluggish economy and, despite the complicity of silence -- including the recent disappearance of the economist Gao Shanwen -- they are asking why Jack Ma's success was envied and punished, rather than celebrated. After seeing change around the world, many are asking why entrepreneurship must bow to party control.

The CCP is not alone in struggling to deliver prosperity these days. But those who will succeed are the leaders who understand that only a technological revolution can generate productive growth.

That demands the freedom to innovate and succeed.

A society that silences its entrepreneurs, that sees rivals to a party as enemies of the state, that punishes success, can never lead in a technology that requires constant questioning and iteration, that relies on honest, reliable data, and that rewards imagination, openness, and risk, not silence and obedience.

Like a selfish forester, the censor cuts down trees today, and refuses to allow new ones to be planted for tomorrow.

It is clear -- freedom is the essential building block of innovation and the future.

This brings me to why I'm here today. Taiwan's importance to global security isn't primarily about its strategic location. It's about its strategic capability.

TSMC and the semiconductor ecosystem you've built here is enabling a new global revolution not written in a red book but on a silicon wafer.

When we talk about TSMC's advanced semiconductor production, we're talking about a revolution that is enabling future security and prosperity.

Of course, you haven't done it alone. No one succeeds without friends.

In your semiconductor industry, I see echoes of what helped Britain prosper centuries ago -- the openness to ideas and the skills and networks to exploit them.

Our prosperity was born out of centres of excellence that transformed our cities like Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham into ideas factories and engines of growth. That's not just companies, its knowledge networks, where expertise is cultivated, shared, and refined over generations.

Our people travelled the world but it was what happened at home that mattered. A constitutional monarch, not a directing tyrant meant new techniques were tried -- some failed -- and ideas were given shape. The power of these networks lay not in their individual members, but in the ecosystem of the whole.

Today, Taiwan is part of an even more global network with an industry fundamental to all of our futures.

Your semiconductor industry represents an ecosystem of unprecedented sophistication. This island doesn't just manufacture chips -- you make the spider's silk that binds the world.

That deep expertise can't be replicated quickly or easily. You can't easily copy Empress Lei Tzu and relocate the new silk factories.

Building the nervous system of artificial intelligence has put Taiwan at the heart of the new global revolution and made you a key partner for the success of every country and company. You are irreplaceable. We now share the responsibility to work with you to guard your successes and ensure they are shared so that we all prosper.

In Britain we must do more. Everything from treating your envoys as we would treat others, to building on the work I started with your former Minister for Digital Affairs, Audrey Tang, on understanding the cyber threats to each other's country.

The United Kingdom's commitment to Taiwan shouldn't just be a deal with a friend -- but ensuring that the future of technology is shaped by values we share: transparency, fairness, respect for individual rights, and commitment to the rule of law.

Taiwan is the guardian of China's outward facing tradition. Your importance extends beyond your own shores and your network connecting Britain, the US, the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan, and increasingly, partners like the Philippines brings unique strengths to the innovation frontier.

This isn't about military technology -- it's about how technological capability has become the foundation of national power -- economic and military.

When we stand with Taiwanese society, we're supporting that vision and the ability to share innovation which saw us taking ideas from each other and enjoying the benefits. That's open China. The China that would not lock up Jack Ma, Jimmy Lai, or so many others -- it's the China of Yang Zhenning and Tu Youyou, of innovation and discovery. The heirs to the Fourth of May Movement.

That's why for me, we should not be talking about containing China, but about supporting a model of development built on freedom that benefits everyone, including China.

Punishing success and arresting those who challenge the way things are can only delay and intensify the coming change. Like an earthquake, the smaller, more frequent disturbances can lead to gradual change, holding them back sees pressure simply grow until it is uncontainable.

If you will not allow evolution, you leave only revolution.

In Taiwan, I see Chinese civilization hasn't been diminished by freedom -- it's been enhanced and transformed by it. It has enabled your industry to innovate and proves that Chinese and Taiwanese culture is essential to our whole world.

Our task, together, is to ensure these technologies develop in ways that promote prosperity, freedom, and peace. That's the true meaning of security in our age, and it's why the cooperation between the United Kingdom and Taiwan remains so vital to our common future.

The path forward isn't always clear, but Lu Xun's observation that "as people are walking all the time in the same spot, a way appears" is true.

By standing together, by supporting the model of freedom that Taiwan represents, we can help ensure that the future belongs not to autocrats who demand silence, but to innovators who dare to speak.

Thank you.