rank within the top three in the world. Beginning from 1995, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has tried to implement a program to develop Taiwan into an Asia-Pacific manufacturing center in order to create a competitive advantage for industries. Some results have been obtained so far. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and national enterprises provided 10-20 percent of their expenditure on R & D to assist small and medium-sized enterprises to carry out research and development. Five technical promotion groups have been organized by the Industrial Development Bureau to help promote 10 newly developed industries including information, communication, aerospace, precision machinery, semiconductor, medicine, and pollution control. Some 21 industrial zones of intelligent type have been put into the program and six of them have started operation.

It is expected that in the year 2010, the technical-intensive industry will have a share of 50 percent of Taiwan's industrial structure. Whether it is possible to reach this target depends, of course, on efforts of both the government and the people in Taiwan.