President Lai Ching-te used a televised interview that aired Friday night to restate one of his administration’s more ambitious economic goals: turning Taiwan’s capital market into the Asian equivalent of the Nasdaq, a place where startups from anywhere in the world come to raise money and plug into the island’s hardware supply chain. He argued Taiwan is better positioned to win that race than South Korea, Japan, Singapore, China or Hong Kong, pointing to the local market’s status as the world’s fifth largest by value, its deep liquidity, and what he called the most comprehensive AI ecosystem on the planet.