In the 1980s, following the sharp appreciation in the exchange rate of the NT dollar and other developments, large numbers of Taiwanese firms and even entire industries began relocating overseas. This was just when Southeast-Asian countries were liberalizing their foreign investment laws, and places like Malaysia and Thailand became the first stops on the global treks of Taiwanese commercial adventurers.
Getting behind this trend, Taiwan’s Board of International Trade declared 1989 to be the “Action Year for the Development of Trade with Southeast Asia.” Not long after, Sinorama carried field reports on the investment environments in Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, as well as their potential risks.
Win-win situations
In 1990, the ROC government began permitting indirect investment in, and trade with, mainland China. Taiwanese capital flows to the mainland rose very rapidly, reaching virtually half of our nation’s entire overseas investment. Business opportunities there were proving so attractive, in fact, that the government began to worry about excessive dependence on mainland China, and in 1993 the Ministry of Economic Affairs started encouraging Taiwanese businesses to direct more of their overseas capital inputs to Southeast Asia.
Following the declaration of this “Go South” concept, in 1994 Sinorama sent journalists to one of the three focal points of the policy—the island of Batam in Indonesia. Unfortunately, despite its advantageous geographical location, workers were hard to find and labor costs turned out to be too high.
In addition to Southeast Asia and mainland China, many Taiwanese businesspeople also saw Latin America—where a number of countries have formal diplomatic ties with the ROC—as untrodden territory with economic potential. In 1997 Sinorama reporters visited the Fort Davis Export Processing Zone in Panama to report on how Taiwanese firms were attempting to create win-win situations in these distant lands.
Diplomatic considerations
As in Latin America, formal diplomatic ties also proved to be a strong foundation for Taiwanese investment in Pacific island countries like the Marshall Islands and Palau.
Of course, if bilateral relations turn sour, this will also impact Taiwanese firms. Take South Africa, for example, which for a long period maintained very close relations with the ROC. Thanks to the country’s attractive conditions and resources, and with an added boost of encouragement from the ROC government, in the 1980s and into the early 1990s an estimated 200 Taiwanese companies and over 10,000 emigrants relocated there. But diplomatic relations between the two countries were broken off in 1998, cheap products from mainland China were flooding into Africa, and social order was deteriorating in South Africa, so consequently many Taiwanese companies pulled out. Sinorama reporters who visited the country in 2000 found out first-hand the continuing ambivalence of Taiwanese businesspeople who were still hanging in there.
In 2001, we again turned our attention to Southeast Asia, visiting Taiwanese businesspeople in Thailand, Vietnam, and the Subic Bay Industrial Park—funded by Taiwan—in the Philippines. The region had only recently been swept by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and our focus, naturally enough, was on how Taiwanese firms were surviving the turmoil.
On a related subject, we did not forget to include the international economic contributions of emigrants from our island. In 2006 Taiwan Panorama journalists visited the US to talk with venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, researchers, and engineers, getting an inside look at how talented people who had moved to the US from Taiwan have played a critical role in high-tech industries in Silicon Valley.
In recent years, regional integration in Southeast Asia has also come under our microscope. We have sent reporters to Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia to describe how Taiwanese businesses are trying to seize the opportunities created by the economic integration of these and neighboring countries (e.g. “ASEAN+1”). Some firms are making use of cheap land, labor, and raw materials; others are taking advantage of tariff incentives and industrial policy; and still others are exploring untapped markets or engaging in “risk diversification.”
The flexibility and adaptiveness of Taiwanese businesspeople all over the world is truly a wonder to behold, and Taiwan Panorama has been there to make sure that you too get a chance to behold it!
This photo shows a plant in Myanmar, employing 1600 people, that belongs to Taiwan’s Tah Hsin Industrial Corporation.
The highly automated South African factory of textile manufacturer the Zhupiter company.
A billboard for Taiwan’s Vedan Corporation stands prominently on one bank of the Saigon River.
In the 1990s the ROC government began to encourage firms to direct their overseas investments to Southeast Asia. The photo shows a Taiwanese bicycle factory in Indonesia.
In 1997, Acer opened a store on the toniest shopping street in Mexico City.
