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National Geographic : 1993 Nov
Contents
policy to bring about Taiwan's economic mir acle. In 1950 the communist Chinese were mounting an assault on Taiwan when North Korea's armies swept over the 38th parallel to attack South Korea. President Harry S. Tru man recognized Taiwan's strategic position as "an unsinkable aircraft carrier" keeping China at bay and ordered the Seventh Fleet into the Formosa Strait. That ended commu nist invasion plans. A total of 1.5 billion dol lars in U. S. economic aid began flowing in. "We used U. S. aid very effectively," K. T. Li, 82, former Taiwan economic affairs and finance minister and the architect of the eco nomic miracle, told me. Li began by buying land from landlords and selling it to the peas ants who tilled it. "That gave our farmers incentive to boost production," Li explained, "and it gave the landlords the capital to become industrialists." At the same time, Li pressed for develop ment of highways, telephones, and electric power. By 1965 the economy had improved to such an extent that Taiwan became the first recipient of U. S. aid to no longer request it. In 1966 Taiwan launched the world's first export-processing zone in the southern city of Kaohsiung. Tiny "living room factories" sprang up all over the island. By the end of the Taiwan: The Other China Changes Course decade it was said that smoke coming out of a chimney was the sign of a patriotic household. Everything from Christmas tree lights and shoes to refrigerators and television sets poured off small-scale assembly lines. All of it was cheap, much of it was shoddy, but it helped generate the capital to build heavy industries like petrochemicals and steel that today are among Taiwan's biggest. In 1980 Taiwan made its own "great leap forward" with the opening of Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park, 45 miles from Taipei, in the hope of luring home the enor mous pool of technical talent working abroad. Here, 25,000 employees of more than 125 electronics firms live and work in azalea landscaped surroundings reminiscent of Cali fornia's Silicon Valley. One person Hsinchu Park lured home was Patrick Wang, the genial founder of Microelectronics Technology Inc. Wang told me how his company began. "It was 1983," Wang said. "There were eight of us who'd gone to the U. S. for advanced degrees. The U. S. had broken dip lomatic relations with Taiwan and had recog nized communist China. Our families were here, and we were worried. Mr. Li had declared a policy to lift Taiwan into the world of high technology. We felt that we could, and
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