Taipei: Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has asserted that the nation's economic reliance on China has reached an all-time low, a statement that Beijing has swiftly contested, maintaining that the economic ties across the Taiwan Strait remain robust.According to Focus Taiwan, the MAC released a statement on Monday indicating that cross-strait trade and economic relations have experienced "structural changes" over recent years. This evolution is evidenced by a decline in Taiwan's exports to China and Hong Kong, which fell from 43.9% of the total exports in 2020 to 26.6% in 2025. Additionally, the portion of Taiwan's outbound investments directed to China decreased from 83.8% in 2010 to 3.8% in 2025, and further to 0.9% in the first five months of 2026.The MAC attributed these changes to several factors, including the strategic competition between the U.S. and China, China's economic slowdown, and Beijing's economic pressure on Taiwan. The statement came as the 16th anniversary of the Economic Cooper ation Framework Agreement (ECFA), a trade pact between Taiwan and China, was marked. The MAC noted that Taiwan's exports to China of goods on ECFA's "early-harvest list" fell to US$13.1 billion in 2025, representing a decrease to 13.1% of Taiwan's total exports to China, the lowest since the ECFA's implementation.Contrastingly, the reaction from China's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) on Thursday centered on recent trade volume figures, disputing Taiwan's claims. TAO Spokesperson Zhu Fenglian highlighted at a Beijing news briefing that cross-strait trade had reached US$314.33 billion in 2025, marking a 7.3% increase from the previous year. In the first five months of 2026, trade between Taiwan and China totaled US$150.84 billion, a 22% rise year-on-year.Zhu further detailed that China's exports to Taiwan climbed 30.6% to US$41.87 billion, while imports from Taiwan grew by 19.1% to US$108.96 billion during the same period. "These figures show that cross-strait economic ties are not weakening, but strengthening ," Zhu stated, countering Taiwan's portrayal of diminishing economic dependency.