Just a couple thoughts : I've been playing around with Trip.com, doing dummy searches within a week's timeframe to/from Taiwan and Mainland. I'm unfortunately not seeing any decrease in prices for these "close-in" flights between the Mainland and Taiwan, except for those that involve very long/unnecessary correspondances. I'm not going to lose a day of my vacations, sitting with a 6h transfer time, triple my total travel time just to save 100 EUR.

Example of a dummy search for 01 Nov.




I ended up using my Flying Blue miles to reserve the outbound PEK -> TPE on CI at the end of December.

Will probably also soon reserve the return from Taiwan to Mainland (up to HRB) paying cash.