Do you still remember how ten years ago, when a group of young people had just started out in the information industry producing computers and peripherals for foreign OEM buyers, many big businessmen sneered: "What kind of high technology is this? It's just another assembly business."

Yet as of last year, the information industry had already left many of Taiwan's former number-one industries far behind, becoming our nation's third largest export industry. How did these ugly ducklings turn themselves into swans?

Partly, it could be due to the blessings of circumstance. The computer has set off what has been called the second industrial revolution, and the rapidity of computerization around the world has been startling. There are already more than 20 million personal computers in the world, and the number is expected to grow by at least 10 million a year in the future. This ever-expanding cake has provided entrepreneurs with the opportunity for constant growth.

The production of computers, once big and bulky, used to be a monopoly of huge companies like IBM. But the invention of the personal computer some twenty years ago led to many other makers achieving their own rags-to-riches success stories.

Like Apple in the U.S. and Acer in the ROC In a mere twelve years, Acer has expanded from five workers led by Stan Shih to 5,000 and from an initial capital investment of NT$1 million (about US$40,000) to an annual turnover of NT$15.7 billion.

Compared with other domestic industries, computer makers can boast with pride: We're the ones that get the least protection from the government.

Chintay Shih, executive vice president of the Industrial Technology Research Institute, points out that the government's apparent neglect is in fact "painstaking care."

"Why are tariffs so low? Because we have to import so many important components," he says. To effectively guide the development of this strategic industry, "the government has used methods different from conventional protection."

He explains: From an economic standpoint, the closer the government's intervention is to the market, the less efficient it works. So for the information industry, the government opened up markets on the one hand while on the other it set up or supported organizations like the Industrial Technology Research Institute, the National Science Council, the Institute for Information Industry, and the Office of Science and Technology Advisors in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, which research and develop new technology and transfer it to the private sector to make up for the insufficient ability of the country's small-and mid-sized computer companies to perform R&D on their own. In addition, the Hsinchu Science Industrial Park was set up to serve as a cradle for high-tech industry.

We have also been fairly active in manpower training. Taiwan's colleges and universities each year send about 3,000 graduates in fields related to computers out their portals. That large a number of well-trained information personnel is beyond the reach of South Korea, Singapore, or Hong Kong.

Another often-overlooked contributor to the success of Taiwan's information industry is the traditional industries of television, toys, and telephones. But while traditional industries may have laid the foundation for the development of the information industry, the information industry has not done its part in turn to help Taiwan computerize.

"We shouldn't rest on our laurels of being the sixth largest computer maker in the world," points out Tu Chuan-chang. "Besides joining the big four, our next goal should be to develop computers and software that are easier for Chinese people to use, to help the country computerize and raise productivity."

Perhaps that day we'll have even more of a right to call ourselves "a high-tech island"!

[Picture Caption]

Stopping at the electronics store, picking up some parts, and bringing them home to put together is required course work for the ROC's "computer people."