Development In Taiwan Research Articles

Analysis and Evaluation of Difference in the Level of Regional Development across Taiwan

Currently there is a large gap in the level of socio-economic development across regions in Taiwan and inter-regional economic disequilibrium prevails. 23 cities (counties) in Taiwan were taken for example to analyze and evaluate the difference in the level of regional economic development. Firstly, based on the principle in selection of indicators for the level of regional economic development, combined with the actual situation of Taiwan's regional economic development and cities (counties) as the evaluation unit, indicators for evaluation were selected in a scientific and reasonable manner and the weight of each evaulation indicator was determined by Delphi method, thus to establish an evaluation indicator system for the level of economic development in Taiwan’s 23 cities (counties). Secondy, the multi-index comprehensive measurement was used to calculate the composite index of the level of economic development of each evaluation unit, and after horizontal, vertical comparison and analytical investigation of the cities (counties), the reasons for the difference in economic development were analyzed (H • H • Nekrasov, "Regional Economics: Theory • Problem • Methods" 1978). Finally, measures were proposed to coordinate the regional development.

Collective individualities: cultural and political reception in Taiwan's history, architecture and cities

Reception is an idea which deals with the reinterpretation of knowledge. Reception therefore appears as an important issue in studies of historiography that see textual forms of history as representations of the past. Reception in history varies from agent to agent: different subjects who hold different ideological positions, in different positions with respect to power relations, receive the same object differently. Public reception, for instance, plays an important role in shaping the spatial representations of architecture and cities, which can be regarded as textual forms of history and therefore as a form of historiography which reinterprets and integrates the facts of the past. The work of Ackbar Abbas, in his depiction of the skyscrapers in Hong Kong which inscribe capitalism in the fabric of that city, offers a remarkable example. He illustrates how Hong Kong's spatial routine plays out in the reception of styles; for example, design oriented towards economy, the phenomenon of constant building and rebuilding, and the pursuit of hyper-density in Hong Kong's built environment. In different time periods, locations and cultural-political contexts, therefore, the public reception of architecture and cities differs. This paper takes Taiwan as an example. It examines a transformational period – from Taiwan's post-Second World War development to the present – scrutinising the reception of its history, architecture and cities.

Foreign Ownership and Firm Internationalization: Evidence from Taiwan

Internationalization has received escalating attention in corporate strategic choice. The contribution of foreign ownership to Taiwan's economic development was recognized. The higher ratio of foreign ownership indicates that foreign institutions have significant influences on corporate strategy formation, and domestic companies can benefit from assistances of their foreign investors. Hence, foreign ownership will affect corporate internationalization. This paper uses Taiwan's listed companies as sample and measure corporate internationalization by foreign assets, foreign subsidiary and country scope. Our empirical findings suggest that higher the proportion of foreign ownership and foreign director has positive association with e higher degree of corporate internationalization. Foreign investors have international experiences and linkages which foster domestic companies to engage in internationalizing activities

Enjoying Aeronautic Sports: A Strategic Plan for Hot Air Ballooning Development in Taiwan

Hot air ballooning is a form of popular leisure activity in Taiwan owing to government support in promoting the activity. This study aims to address the opportunities and constraints facing the development of hot air ballooning as a leisure activity in Taiwan. In addition, the role that hot air ballooning might play in the development of tourism in rural regions of Taiwan is explored. The purpose of the study is to explore the constraints on Taiwan's development of hot air ballooning, analyze hot air ballooning trends in Taiwan, and discuss safety issues related to hot air ballooning.

Post WWII Japan-Taiwan Economic Relations Development and Future Direction

Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 lead to 50 years of colonial rule of Taiwan. The industrial hardware facilities and equipment left behind by the Japanese withdrawal from Taiwan after the World War II (WWII) provided Taiwan with a basis for industrial development. The frequent economic exchanges between Taiwan and Japan economies, even before the Second World War, became stagnant with the withdrawal of Japan from Taiwan after the war. Afterwards, due to the outbreak of the Korean War, a large number of special needs promoted the rapid growth of the Japanese economy, which led to the economic development of Taiwan and other Asian countries. Once again, Taiwan and Japan were economically joined and exchanges became even more active, as compared to the situation before World War II. The success of Taiwan's economic development still cannot escape the trade and economic development model highly dependent on the United States of postwar Asian countries, in particular, foreign capital is a very important factor. Japanese capital, ranking the second place in foreign investments in Taiwan, is one of the indispensable factors. On the other hand, the opening up of the Chinese market has given a great deal of room for cooperation between Taiwanese and Japanese enterprises adept in direct investment.

Asian Regeneration? Technohybridity in Taiwan's Biotech?

Stem cell science is a modern global form, yet it serves deeply social and often nationalistic visions of the role of biotechnology, and its practices and meanings are contingent and situated. In this paper, I show how stem cell research represents a deliberate conjoining of biotechnology and national development in Taiwan. This paper is based on more than a year of ethnographic research conducted in Taiwan between 2005 and 2007 and builds upon Charis Thompson's (2010) comparative analysis of flagship stem cell laboratories in Singapore and South Korea. It is also in conversation with Keller and Samuel's (2003) categorical system that classifies Taiwan as a “technohybrid” located between the “technoglobal” and the “technonational.” Here, I argue that while Taiwan's stem cell development incorporates aspects of national, global, and international orientations, these manifest within dynamic and heterogeneous assemblages. Taiwan's national investment in regenerative medicine is a rich site in which to examine visions of a national present and future as well as of Taiwan's place on the stage of global science.

Attitudinal inconsistency toward organic food in relation to purchasing intention and behavior

PurposeThis study aims to examine the attitudinal inconsistency among Taiwanese consumers toward organic agriculture/food, and its relationship to their willingness to pay a premium and purchase for organic product.Design/methodology/approachA telephone survey consisting of 913 households was made to reach an estimated 3.3 percent sampling error with 95 percent confidence level.FindingsIt was found that those who were female, who had higher occupation prestige, who had college education levels, who were aged in their 40s, and who possessed an optimistic opinion toward the necessity of organic farming tend to pay a premium for and buy organic food. The majority of Taiwanese respondents showed a high level of concern about pesticides but a low trust in organic food, which revealed an attitudinal inconsistency toward organic agriculture/food. A multiple discriminant analysis with a moderating variable shows that consumers' trust in organic food and their pesticide concern jointly explain the respondents' willingness to pay a premium and purchasing behavior. The influence of consumers' pesticide concern on their willingness to pay a premium and purchase actually depends on their levels of trust.Originality/valueAs a whole, lack of trust and confusing organic product certification levels is the main barrier to Taiwan's organic agriculture development. Further communication and policy modification is needed to reinforce consumers' confidence in organic agriculture/food.

Sailing into rough seas: Taiwan's women seafarers' career development struggle

Synopsis The shipping industry is traditionally considered an exclusively male domain. However, beginning in 1998, Taiwanese women started to serve as training ship officers on container ships, with approximately 60 female ship officers having worked on merchant ships to date. This study examines qualitatively the career development situation of Taiwanese women seafarers, using Schneider's (1987) attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) framework and organizational socialization. The study shows that, whereas the stereotype that women are not suited for seafaring remains prevalent in the Taiwan shipping industry, women seafarers are as passionate and committed to their careers as their male counterparts. The ASA theory predicts that Taiwan's women seafarers still face stormy seas, and that the performance of these few active women seafarers will have an effect on the career development of their successors.

Older people, population ageing and social policy in Taiwan

This article focuses in depth on Taiwan, as a case study, to discuss and review recent development in ageing policies and their impact on older people. The development of ageing policies in Taiwan presents a good example in understanding how a country, under the challenge of rapid population ageing, has developed its social policies. It also demonstrates how policy reforms are shaped by social and political levers and drivers. This article discusses Taiwan's policy development paying special attention to income maintenance and long-term care system for older people. The success and unresolved challenges arising from recent policy reforms in Taiwan are also addressed.

Evaluation of Taiwan's aboriginal development before Ching Dynasty

This study makes use of information on geography, climate, immigration, history and anthropology to analyse interactions between changes in terrain and migration developments in these two areas from 1624 to 1894. Bangang, on the Yunlin-Chiayi plain, was the biggest city in Taiwan during the period 1624–1720. However, the terrain of this area has changed greatly with the coastline moving toward the west about 20 meters per year. Therefore, many cities and harbours in this area were gradually replaced. As a result, much new land was created and many races immigrated into the area. The first Han Chinese migration was led by Yen Shih-Chi and Cheng Chih-Lung in 1624, and entered the coastal area of Yunlin-Chiayi for exploitation. By 1650 it had grown to 25 000 people and that huge number forced the Tsou tribe to begin moving toward Ali Mountain.

Returns to scale in DEA models for performance evaluations

The technology industry is a major driving force in Taiwan's economic development. The Taiwan government employed technology development programs (TDPs) to stimulate industrial technology research and development to enhance industry competitiveness. This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a nonparametric approach, to evaluate the relative efficiency of decision-making units (DMUs) that use multiple inputs to produce multiple outputs, to evaluate the relative managerial efficiency of TDPs. The inputs are human resources and expenditures. The outputs are patents and technology outcomes. We investigated TDP performance over the period from 1999 to 2003. This study uses CCR and BCC models, which are DEA model variants, to calculate efficiency indexes. CCR is adopted under the assumption of constant returns to scale. BCC is used to understand the variable returns to scale, including the constant, decreasing and increasing. We found that TDPs in the material and chemical engineering fields in 1999 and 2001, machinery and aerospace fields in 1999, and communication and optoelectronics fields in 2002 had better performance than the other TDPs. We provide potential improvements for inefficient DMUs.

The overseas Taiwanese in Belize

PurposeThe paper aims to give an account to describe the way the South‐South development programme is realized between Taiwan and Belize.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is the result of ethnographic fieldwork research combined with a literature study.FindingsThe development of the newly industrialized country Taiwan can be characterized by a drastic transformation from an impoverished agrarian society towards an affluent industrial economy. Now, Taiwan is aiming to help other developing countries to walk the same path by drawing lessons from their so‐called “Taiwan experience”. In order to transfer their experience, Taiwan has established an overseas development organization, the International Cooperation and Development Fund. This organization offers development assistance to countries of which Taiwan receives political recognition. Central and South America are the regions where most of Taiwan's diplomatic ties exist. One of the recipients of Taiwanese assistance in this area is Belize, a small English speaking, Central American country in the Caribbean Sea, with a multi‐ethnic, densely populated, relatively poor population.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research might examine the ways in which these Taiwanese farmers have integrated in Belize and how their entrepreneurial activities contribute in this process.Practical implicationsAfter visiting Taiwan's project sites in Belize and interviewing government officials, Taiwanese‐Belizeans, Belizean farmers, and non‐farmers, it was found that much of what the Taiwanese brought was indeed considered beneficial, although incomplete. The links between the Taiwanese development organization and the wider society, Belize, were not clearly developed at the time, not least because of the problems in communicating with the Taiwanese development workers(for instance due to language issues). It would be wrong to suggest, however, that Taiwan's development project was only perceived as raising problems for it did have a positive impact.Originality/valueAlthough the first Taiwanese project in Belize was launched in 1989 it has until recently received little attention. This paper explores the social impact of this development project from the Taiwanese in Belize.

Consolidation of democracy and historical legacies: a case study of Taiwan

In political science there is broad interest in whether a newly established democracy succeeds in overcoming the perils of democratisation and matures into a consolidated democracy or regresses to authoritarianism. Taiwan was under martial law for almost four decades. Democratic consolidation, therefore, is primarily a question of how to overcome the legacies of the former authoritarian regime. Nationalism and dysfunctional political institutions are some of the legacies that limit Taiwan's democratic development. The study of these destructive elements is important in the attempt to interpret Taiwan's most recent political history and to formulate effective democracy-building policies. In the following, I would like to address the aforementioned legacies and their implications for Taiwan's current and future democratic development.

Spin-off strategies and performance: A case study of Taiwan’s Acer group

This study bridges a gap in current literature by providing empirical evidence of factors affecting the performance of non-academic spin-offs originating from the Acer Group in Taiwan. The Acer Group is the epitome of Taiwan's industrial development over the past 30 years. This study utilizes the spin-offs of the Acer Group to empirically analyze the influences on spin-off performance, demonstrating that the performance of a spin-off is significantly correlated with the number of years of service of the CEO in the parent company, as well as the method of company establishment, sources of company technology and number of items shared in common with the parent company. The analytical results obtained by this study highlight two issues. First, spin-off performance is likely to be enhanced if its operations are linked to those of the parent, and if the CEO has a long history of involvement with the parent, feeding his/her ability to tap into the resources of the parent. Second, a spin-off performs better during its initial stages if it is an internal venture spun out from the parent company with its technology researched and developed within the parent.

The roles of reward structures and project characteristics in Taiwan's high-tech new product development team performance

In Taiwan, the status of the high-tech industries is closely related to economic progress. Some of the reasons that make these industries remain profitable are a high degree of product innovation capability. This paper focuses on Taiwan's high-tech new product development (NPD) teams to probe into the influences of different reward structures and project characteristics on NPD team performance. Results of the study show a significant influence of cash-based rewards, procedure justice and the length of project development cycle on NPD team performance, as well as partial support for the impact of position-based, outcome-based rewards and project risk on NPD team performance. More importantly, when businesses offer more shares than cash as rewards, significantly positive effect is only exerted on 'adhere to budget and schedule,' and bears no significant effects on market performance.

High-speed rail in Taiwan: New experience and issues for future development

This study aims to identify some possible issues and challenges for Taiwan's High Speed Rail (HSR) system, which was constructed and is operated under a Build–Operate–Transfer (BOT) model. The operational experiences in the initial stage for equivalent systems in Japan, France, Germany, and elsewhere are introduced herein. This study first presents Taiwan's HSR system development and conducts an ex post cost–benefit analysis of this transportation system. Second, unsatisfied ridership is examined to look for possible solutions to increase it. Third, the paper examines the impact of HSR on the intercity transportation market. Finally, the integration between HSR and various existing transportation modes is discussed. Several policy suggestions are included, which are useful for the decision makers of transportation systems’ entrepreneurs, the central government, and the local authorities to derive a comprehensive post-HSR planning strategy for a more integrated transportation system.

Automobile gross emitter screening with remote sensing data using objective-oriented neural network

One of the costs of Taiwan's massive economic development has been severe air pollution problems in many parts of the island. Since vehicle emissions are the major source of air pollution in most of Taiwan's urban areas, Taiwan's government has implemented policies to rectify the degrading air quality, especially in areas with high population density. To reduce vehicle pollution emissions an on-road remote sensing and monitoring system is used to check the exhaust emissions from gasoline engine automobiles. By identifying individual vehicles with excessive emissions for follow-up inspection and testing, air quality in the urban environment is expected to improve greatly. Because remote sensing is capable of measuring a large number of moving vehicles in a short period, it has been considered as an assessment technique in place of the stationary emission-sampling techniques. However, inherent measurement uncertainty of remote sensing instrumentation, compounded by the indeterminacy of monitoring site selection, plus the vagaries of weather, causes large errors in pollution discrimination and limits the application of the remote sensing. Many governments are still waiting for a novel data analysis methodology to clamp down on heavily emitting vehicles by using remote sensing data. This paper proposes an artificial neural network (ANN), with vehicle attributes embedded, that can be trained by genetic algorithm (GA) based on different strategies to predict vehicle emission violation. Results show that the accuracy of predicting emission violation is as high as 92%. False determinations tend to occur for vehicles aged 7–13 years, peaking at 10 years of age.

Development Strategy and Export-Led Growth: Lessons Learned from Taiwan's Experience

This paper investigates Taiwan's development strategy from both demand-side (policies that bias production incentives against domestic market demand and toward exports) and supply-side (policies that favour tradable against service or non-tradable sectors) perspectives. In the early stages of Taiwan's economic development, the strategy mix increased overall factor productivity by reallocating resources from the less productive (service or domestic) sectors to the more productive (manufacturing or exporting) ones and helped achieve the goal of reaching global markets through the exploitation of comparative advantage. However, as the Taiwanese economy developed, government intervention turns out to be ineffective because of how it distorts resource allocation, in particular a neglect of services sectors.

The Silenced Technology—the Beauty and Sorrow of Reassembled Cars

Reassembled cars can be seen everywhere in Taiwan. In the past few decades, the government has repeatedly clamped down on them. It has also taken measures such as negative persuasion, technical requirements, alienation, phaseout, and developed standard agricultural vehicles to eradicate reassembled cars. But they are able to take advantage of the social context and rationalize their existence. Reassembled cars have not only gained support or sympathy but also overturned the conventional concept of safety, which allows them to fight against official clampdown. To compete against mass-manufactured vehicles, their best strategy is to respond to the circumstances of Taiwan's rural area and offer the best solution. Their external advantages include their services, adaptability to all kinds of environments, not to mention that they are license-free and tax-free. Internal advantages include their safety, low prices, and flexibility in production and use, thanks to the collaborated network consisting of salvage yards and reassembled car makers. By making good use of all the aforementioned advantages and following Taiwan's social development, reassembled cars have gained a competitive niche that has failed the clampdown actions over and over again. But most importantly, they have supported Taiwan's economic development in many sectors.

Taiwan's Transport Development Strategies during Challenging Economic Time

Taiwan's Transport Development Strategies during Challenging Economic Time