Why Taiwan Matters!

I just found a great 2005 article on the Business Week website called "Why Taiwan Matters." It is great stuff and really sheds tremendous light on the tech industry in Taiwan and its global impact. I have quoted it at length below. Be sure to read the remainder. The link is below:

Want to find the hidden center of the global economy? Take a drive along Taiwan's Sun Yat-sen Freeway. This stretch of road is how you reach the companies that connect the vast marketplaces and digital powerhouses of the U.S. with the enormous manufacturing centers of China.

The Sun Yat-sen is as bland as any U.S. interstate, but it's the highway of globalization. Though it snakes along the whole west coast of Taiwan, the key 70-km stretch starts in Taipei's booming new Neihu district of high-tech office buildings and ends in Hsinchu, home to two of Taiwan's best universities, its top research center, and a world-renowned science park. Along the way, the Sun Yat-sen leads to some of the most important but anonymous tech outfits in the world: Asustek Computer, whose China factories spit out iPods and Mini Macs for Apple; and Quanta Computer, the No. 1 global maker of notebook PCs and a key supplier to Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

You'll also find Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the biggest chip foundry on the planet, an essential partner to U.S. companies such as Qualcomm and Nvidia. Dozens more companies dot the Neihu-Hsinchu corridor. There's AU Optronics, a big supplier of liquid-crystal display panels, and Hon Hai Precision Industry, which makes everything from PC components to Sony's PlayStation 2, and which is a fast-rising rival to Flextronics International, the world's biggest contract manufacturer. Taken together, the revenues of Taiwan's 25 key tech companies should hit $122 billion this year.

Taiwan's success is also China's. No one knows for sure how much of China's exports in information and communications hardware are made in Taiwanese-owned factories, but the estimates run from 40% to 80%. As many as 1 million Taiwanese live and work on the mainland. "All the manufacturing capacity in China is overlaid with the management and marketing expertise of the Taiwanese, along with all their contacts in the world," observes Russell Craig, of tech consultants Vericors Inc.

I love the last paragraph! Although China will surely one day find its footing and compete independently in the world of business, they owe a huge debt of gratitude to Taiwanese entrepeneurs who forged the way ahead in manufacturing and investment.

Article: Why Taiwan Matters