Science and Industrial Parks
In order to promote industrial research and development, the government began establishing science parks, economic zones which provide rent and utility breaks, tax incentives and specialized lending rates to attract investment. The first of these, the Hsinchu Science Park was established in 1980 by the National Science Council with a focus on research and development in information technology and biotechnology. It has been called Taiwan's "Silicon Valley" and has expanded to six campuses covering an area of 1,140 hectares (11.4 km2). Over 430 companies (including many listed on TAIEX) employing over 130,000 people are located within the park, and paid in capital totaled US$36.10 billion in 2008. Both Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and United Microelectronics Corporation, the world's largest and second largest contract chipmakers, are headquartered within the park. Since 1980, the government has invested over US$1 billion in the park's infrastructure, and further expansion for more specialized parks have been pursued. The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), headquartered within the park, is the largest nonprofit research organization in Taiwan and has worked to develop applied technological research for industry, including for many of Taiwan's traditional industries (such as textiles).
Following the success of the first park, the Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP), consisting of the Tainan Science Park and the Kaohsiung Science Park, was established in 1996. In addition to companies, several research institutes (including Academia Sinica) and universities have set up branches within the park with a focus on integrated circuits (ICs), optoelectronics, and biotechnology. The Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP) was established more recently in 2003. While the CTSP is still under development, many firms (including AU Optronics) have already moved into the park and begun manufacturing operations. Like the other parks, CTSP also focuses on ICs, optoelectronics, and biotechnology, with the optoelectronics industry accounting for 78% of its revenue in 2008. These three science parks alone have attracted over NT$4 trillion (US$137 billion) worth of capital inflow, and in 2010 total revenue within the parks reached NT$2.16 trillion (US$72.8 billion).
The Linhai Industrial Park, established in Kaohsiung in 1960, is a well-developed industrial zone with over 490 companies focusing on other industries including base metals, machinery and repairs, nonmetallic mineral products, chemical products, and food and beverage manufacturing. The Changhua Coastal Industrial Park, located in Changhua County, is a newer industrial cluster with many different industries such as food production, glass, textiles, and plastics.
Read more about this topic: Economy Of Taiwan
Famous quotes containing the words science and, science, industrial and/or parks:
“The belief that established science and scholarship—which have so relentlessly excluded women from their making—are “objective” and “value-free” and that feminist studies are “unscholarly,” “biased,” and “ideological” dies hard. Yet the fact is that all science, and all scholarship, and all art are ideological; there is no neutrality in culture!”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
—Jacques Attali (b. 1943)
“The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.”
—Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)