TAIPEI - Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen called Tuesday for a new coalition of democratic countries to maintain the rules-based international order and deter Chinese aggression.

Addressing the annual Ketagalan Forum in Taipei, Tsai said the rapid militarization of the South China Sea and increasing military activities in the Taiwan Strait and East China Sea as well as coercive diplomacy against countries and corporations are destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region.

"It is time for like-minded countries, and democratic friends in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond, to discuss a framework to generate sustained and concerted efforts to maintain a strategic order that deters unilateral aggressive actions," Tsai said.

What the free world needs, she said, is "a strategic order that encourages cooperation, transparency and problem-solving through dialogue, not threats of war," adding that it also needs "a strategy that avoids war, yet clearly conveys our resolve to protect our democracies."

Emphasizing security and economic development are inseparable, Tsai said the COVID-19 pandemic gives countries around the world an opportunity to reexamine and reorganize economic and trade cooperation, restructure supply chains and reinforce fair and non-coercive trade rules.

"Divided we fall. Together, we are more than the sum of our parts," Tsai said.

Officials, experts and academics from different countries participating in the 2-day forum focused their initial discussions Tuesday on security across the Taiwan Strait, rivalry in the South China Sea and lessons learned from COVID-19.

On Wednesday, they will take up the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and economic security in post COVID-19 era.

Tuesday's keynote speaker H.R. McMaster, former US national security advisor under President Donald Trump, echoed Tsai's proposition by saying the free world should work together to counter Chinese aggression.

Saying the potential for clashes in the region will increase in the post-pandemic era, McMaster accused China of using the COVID-19 pandemic as cover for aggression from the South China Sea to the East China Sea and the country's Himalayan order with India.

"Taiwan, as it always does, received special attention," he said via video teleconference.

To preserve peace, McMaster said the United States and like-minded partners in the Asia-Pacific region must convince China's leaders that they cannot accomplish their objectives through military force.

Taiwan and China have been governed separately since they split during the civil war in 1949. Beijing, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province, has since then endeavored to bring the self-ruled island into its fold, by force if necessary.