Taiwan Readies for High-Tech Era, Buoyed by Government Support

Abstract

Industrial chemistry in Taiwan is closely controlled by government policies, particularly those affecting research and development. Those policies have had a demonstrable success over the past decade. Now, however, as Taiwan faces the high-tech era, a new sense of urgency is emerging. Much of Taiwan's future success in high technology will depend on the efforts of the Research, Development & Evaluation Commission (RDEC) of the Executive Yuan (the Executive Yuan is a kind of cabinet department roughly equivalent to one of the Presidential Cabinet departments in the U.S.) and those of the National Science Council. Longrange effort in R&D rests with the universities and the National Academia Sinica. Science and technology in Taiwan are well represented at the highest levels of government planning. Jenn-Tai Hwang, vice chairman of RDEC and former head of the Chinese Chemical Society, explains that as a result of a governmental reorganization in 1987, RDEC has a status equivalent to other ...