China Airlines to fly Airbus A350 on Sydney-Taipei route

Not only looks good but clearly among the best PY design out there today.  It also has the most spacious PY specs of all 350 operators(only LH matches CI) being significantly more generous than even SQ and CX.

As stated in the article, TPE-SYD/BNE total wkly capacity by CI increase fm 11 wkly to 21 wkly as below:

TPE-SYD - Current=7w, Dec17=14w

TPE-BNE - Current=4w, Dec17=7w

I suspect CI is positioning itself as a high quality, value for money alternative somewhere between where CX and CZ currently sit on both Europe and more importantly Asia where CI/AE have comparable footprint now to CX/KA in terms of destinations in China, as well as Japan and Korea in second tier cities which is superior in coverage to CX/KA and doesn't require backtracking as can be the case with KE/OZ.

MEL-CHC definitely has been a seasonal service on CI system timetable for yrs.

"CI still intends to service AKL and CHC as there is a decent market for passengers wanting to fly to Taiwan."

There is for traveling between AKL and Taiwan but it doesn't mean BNE/SYD-AKL by CI must continue.  Canceling AKL-BNE/SYD-TPE in exchange for AKL-TPE nonstop sounds like a more attractive option for those pax and consolidating those traffic currently splitted across AKL-BNE and AKL-SYD into a single AKL-TPE route seems like a sustainable scale to initially support perhaps 4x wkly.  In addition, it opens up 1-stop routings via TPE between AKL and the entire N.E.Asian CI network covering so many Tier2 cities across Japan and China....AKL-TPE nonstop won't be only about pax wanting to fly between Taiwan and NZ.

I always believe CI want to do AKL-TPE because tags/5th freedom ops are costly(e.g. tie-up aircraft asset for too long for a given distance)+very low yield(bi-laterally restricted uncompetitive frequency....that's why we see amazing CI fare on Trans-Tasman).  They couldn't do it for yrs because for that mkt size, their 744/77W hv far too many seats, 343 fuel burn would kill them(Now all gone fm CI fleet) and 333 simply do not hv such range capability.  359 @ CI addresses all those legacy issues re AKL-TPE nonstop.

CHC-Taiwan on the other hand will always stay as a tag fm AU  because of its leisure traffic-heavy nature.

"CI realises the A330 is no longer sufficient when the competition is offering far superior products."

Perhaps on a few other CI routes but clearly not TPE-BNE where their only competitor offers practically the same product std fm nose to tail and on exactly the same aircraft type....I'm surprised your "close contacts in Taiwan who are in the know" are unaware of this.

Why not just fly non-stop? CA, CZ and MU fly nonstop to AKL from Mainland China.

You will get the Express Departure card at the check-in counter when heading to Taiwan and to arrive in Australia(MEL, BNE or SYD), flight attendant will issue Express Arrival Card after the plane takes off.