The UK and Taiwan signed a new science and technology arrangement on Friday, formalising cooperation in semiconductors, space, telecommunications and AI standards, as the two sides wrapped up their 28th annual trade talks in London. The signing happened alongside a memorandum of understanding between UK Export Finance and Taiwan’s EximBank, which aims to open up export credit opportunities for businesses in both markets.
Minister for Trade Lord Sarwar co-chaired the talks with Cynthia Kiang, Taiwan’s deputy minister of economic affairs. The governments discussed digital trade, clean energy, advanced manufacturing and what the Department for Business, Innovation and Science and Trade called resilient supply chains. Taiwan is the UK’s sixth-largest trading partner in Asia-Pacific, with bilateral trade worth £8.9 billion in 2025, according to GOV.UK.
Dr Dave Smith, the UK’s national technology adviser, witnessed the science arrangement being signed and framed it in blunt industrial terms. “The UK and Taiwan are natural partners in emerging technologies – from semiconductors and photonics to space and next-generation communications,” he said. “Our strengths are genuinely complementary: world-leading UK research, design and innovation alongside Taiwan’s unrivalled capability in advanced manufacturing and hardware.”
Worth pausing on that word, arrangement. The document is non-legally binding, a framework rather than a treaty, and the department’s notes to editors say so twice. The UK has held annual trade talks with Taiwan since 1991 on that same unofficial footing, and Friday’s language keeps faith with the convention. Whether British chip designers and Taiwanese fabs see much practical difference between a binding deal and a well-staffed framework is a question the universities will argue about, not the businesses.
The businesses themselves turned up in numbers. Ministers met representatives from UK and Taiwanese firms during a wider programme of engagement by a Taiwanese delegation visiting the UK, and the department said the discussions focused on expanding investment in both directions. The arrangement connects Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council with the UK’s own department for joint research and development, and NSTC minister Cheng-Wen Wu met Baroness Lloyd, the UK’s minister for space, cyber and regulatory reform, ahead of the signing.
For UK semiconductor policy, the timing fits a pattern. Government has spent the past year hunting for structured ties with chip supply chains – the recent push toward sovereign AI funding, discussions with Taiwan’s offshore wind developers under the earlier Enhanced Trade Partnership, and the semiconductor sector deals announced under the DRIVE programme. None of those add up to fabrication capacity on British soil, and nobody seriously expects that. What they build is access: to talent pipelines, to standards tables, to export finance when a British photonics firm wants to scale.
The UK’s approach has been to sign what it can without provoking the objections it cannot absorb. Friday’s arrangement is the latest expression of that calculation, and the £8.9 billion in trade behind it gives both sides a reason to make the framework earn its keep.