Here are three reasons:

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou's efforts of the past seven years to build once impossible trust with Beijing through economic agreements are hitting a wall. China feels it has given Taiwan enough goodies with 21 existing trade, transit and investment deals. Now it's pushing Taiwan for payback: political dialogue that would ultimately settle who owns who. China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan for 65 years but the island says through opinion polls it prefers self-rule. Taiwanese people led that dialogue in 2014 first with mass street protests against legislative ratification of all-but-abandoned service liberalization pact with China and then in November elections by throwing Ma's Nationalist Party out of a staggering nine mayoral and county magistrate jobs.The two governments will keep talking this year as if nothing happened last year, but Taiwan will lack mandates to sign new agreements. China hopes for a political concession from Taiwan before Ma steps down due to term limits in 2016, leaving the presidency open to the more anti-Beijing Democratic Progressive Party. Ma has said no way. "Beijing appears concerned with the possibility that, without having adopted a new policy toward mainland (China) based on ‘one China,' the DPP could win the presidency in 2016," says Alan Romberg, East Asia Program director with the Stimson Institute, a think tank in Washington. The party angered China with pursuit of greater independence when in power from 2000 to 2008. Expect China to grow more nervous as the presidential campaign ramps up late this year.

After several years of financial setbacks, Taiwan's big-name high-tech firms know they can't rely anymore on just contract work from original designers, even Apple . That was history. A lot of contract work has leeched over to cheaper China, the US government wants Silicon Valley developers to contract onshore and Vietnam shows early promise as a new Asian tech manufacturer because of its low costs. Taiwanese PC developer Acer, smartphone maker HTC and you-name-it-we-build-it assembler Foxconn know their future depends largely on what they do themselves rather than for others.Acer, once burned by financial losses and management changes, is trying to bolster its world No. 4 rank in PCs with Google Chromebooks including one with an unusually large 15.6-inch display that it announced this month. HTC is coping with thin profits and a shrunken share of the world smartphone market by experimenting with new stuff: a made-for-social media camera, a tablet or two and perhaps a smart band for athletes – evidenced by its partnership with US sports clothier Under Armor. Expect a me-too, made-in-Taiwan boom in wearable devices after Apple releases the iWatch later this year. Foxconn, struggling against competition for Apple assembly contracts, is said to be developing electric vehicles, robotic tools and its own smartphone, depending on whose buzz you believe.

Acer's Google Chromebook with a 15.6-inch screen

Taiwanese no longer expect their island to depend wholly on manufacturing, the driver of its half-trillion-dollar economy since the 1960s. They want less pollution and factories that still foul the air or water to pay for it legally. Environmental demands will raise pressure on top Taiwan companies such as Formosa Petrochemical Corp. and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering to price pollution controls into their business plans. They're demanding the stuff they buy, particularly food, be authentic, as shown by the outrage toward a series of scandals involving the suspected tainting or mislabeling of cooking oil under the flag of Ting Hsin International Group. Younger people face new pressure as the education ministry plans to kill off university admission exams that depend solely on rote memorization. That measure would foster talent that thinks outside boxes and welcomes trying risky IT start-ups.A preference now for safe jobs threatens long-term economic performance. Taiwan, not China as before, is now the best place to incubate young inventors, argues John Chen, senior director and consultant with the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute in Taipei. Costs are rising in China while material incentives grow locally. "Taiwan's government and enterprises have grants allocated for new start-ups," he says. "Therefore, instead of going to China, the majority of Taiwanese people may rather choose to stay in Taiwan." Expect Taiwan to stiffen laws against companies that pollute, taint or lie to consumers. Expect more favors for inventive university graduates to fuel the next new line of smart gadgetry.