Industrial Structure, Technical Change, and the Role of Government in Development of the Electronics and Information Industry in Taipei,China

Abstract

Taipei,China has achieved remarkable development and export performance in its electronics and information technology industry in the past three decades. Starting out as heavily dependent on foreign technology in the 1960s and 1970s, firms in the electronics and information industry devoted considerable technological effort and successfully negotiated the daunting currents of competition to participate in new product development by the 1990s. The industrial structure of the electronics and information industry has evolved from a small- and medium-size enterprise operation into a large-firm operation by the late 1990s, which further facilitated the export orientation of the electronics and information industry. Government adopted selective industrial policies to overcome the problem of market failure and enhanced systemic coordination and cohesive networking. Therefore, the Taipei,China government essentially “made”, rather than ”picked”, the winner of the electronics and information industry in Taipei,China.