Taiwan appears to be turning US-China trade tensions to its own advantage. While the US has been imposing restrictions on any exchanges of high technology with China, a complex web of supply chains, also buffeted by the COVID-19 crisis, has been seeking to adjust. Taiwan is now proposing that its own high-tech base might be the solution.
On June 4, Taiwan announced a programme that would attract international enterprises to partner with local ones for joint investment in the R&D of next-generation technologies. The scheme is to be driven by government subsidies. Clearly it’s to be a classic win-win arrangement, with foreign companies benefitting financially, and Taiwan’s extensive network of electronics and semiconductor businesses seeing further development of local talent. The programme was officially announced by Chuan-neng Lin, Vice Minister for Economic Affairs.
Broadly, the expectation is that the programme will attract US$1.34 billion, or some NT$40 billion (New Taiwan dollars), in R&D investment by overseas tech companies. If all goes according to plan, that will result in the creation of more than 6,300 jobs a year. To bring this ambitious project to fruition, Taiwan intends to spend over NT$10 billion (US$334.2 million) in subsidies over the next seven years, focusing on three key areas of technological development – 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and semiconductors.
These foci are of course intimately interlinked. The future of AI is closely dependent on the development of a new generation of semiconductor chips that can “machine learn” and “inference” decisions at lightning-fast speed. The application of AI in real-world scenarios, in say the design of self-driving cars, is then dependent on communications in extremely close to real time, meaning 5G.
It’s really no surprise that Taiwan is already in discussions with foreign enterprises – details not yet available – when the island is home to global semicon leader TSMC, as well as a fascinating mosaic of ICT, electronics and other chip design-and-manufacturing companies, of all shapes and sizes. At the same time, Taiwan will be trying to lure much of its own home-grown technology base back across the Taiwan Strait from manufacturing investments on the mainland.
How can we help?
This initiative on the part of Taiwan is a brilliant opportunity for technology-based companies to rebuild their businesses and supply chains across Greater China. Here at Techworks, a tech PR agency based in Hong Kong, we can help you get the ball rolling. We occupy a ‘niche’ as a dedicated and focused B2B technology PR specialist in and for China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
We assist technology-driven high-tech companies wishing to build a dialogue and brand equity with the Chinese and Asian language-speaking engineering community. We build long-term relationships with our clients, and our specific expertise and impressive track record, together with our strategic communications consultancy approach have ensured that we consistently add real value to our clients’ businesses.
We’ll be only too happy to talk to you, no matter what stage you are at on the journey, and you can find our contact details here: https://www.techworksasia.com/contact/
Image: Taipei 101 building
Photo credit: Remi Yuan on Unsplash
