Taiwan's first designated industrial zone was developed at Liutu ?? in Keelung city. It took five years to complete the development of this industrial zone from 1960 to 1965. By 1997, there were 95 designated industrial zones that had been developed with 13,421 hectares of land. In 1998, seven of the 95 designated industrial zones were dissolved and registered under urban industrial zones. Table 8 shows land areas used for the three categories of industrial zones in 1998.

     We see that the total land area of industrial zones is 52,348 hectares, of which 35 percent are in the North region, 33 percent in the Central, 29.5 percent in the South and 2.5 percent in the East. The urban industrial zones have 23,323 hectares and share 44.6 percent of the total area; the non-urban industrial zones have 17,602 hectares of fourth-grade construction land and share 33.6 percent; and the designated industrial zones have 11,422 hectares and share 21.8 percent. Furthermore, of the urban industrial zones. The North region shares 36 percent, the Central 26 percent, the South 35 percent and the East 3 percent. Of the industrial zones located at non-urban, fourth-grade construction land, 46 percent are in the Central region, 37 percent in the North, 15 percent in the South and 2 percent in the East.

     Of the designated industrial zones, 40 percent are in the South region, 31 percent in the North, 26 percent in the Central and 2 percent in the East. Looking into the details of individual cities and counties, we see that the urban industrial zones are mostly located in Taichung (13.3%), Taoyuan (12.1%), and Taipei (11.8%), Tainan (10.4%) and Kaohsiung (10.2%) counties. The non-urban industrial zones are mostly located in Changhua (24.1%), Taoyuan (19.7%), and Yunlin (10.7%) counties. The designated industrial zones are mostly located in Taoyuan county (19.4%), Kaohsiung City (10.3%) and Kaohsiung county (9.2%). In short industrial zones are concentrated in the North region in Taipei and Taoyuan counties, in the Central region in Taichung and Changua counties and in the South region in Kaohsiung city and Kaohsiung county

     The Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) has carried out an investigation over 79 designated industrial zones and thus some details are now available. In terms of the number of factories, the top five industrial zones are Wuku (1,153) in the North, Taichung (846) in the Central, Tafa (549) and Anping (531) in the South and Nankang (463) in the Central. These five industrial zones are all characterized as a synthetic zone.