这是Business Week在这期的封面文章 在大家一片的大陆热时 她针对台湾的优势以及未来的挑战 做了一番精辟的报导 转录在此 跟大家分享 ----------------------------------------------------------- Why Taiwan Matters The global economy couldn't function without it. But can it really find peace with China? Want to find the hidden center of the global economy? Take a drive along Taiwan 's Sun Yat-sen Freeway. This stretch of road is how you reach the companies tha t connect the vast marketplaces and digital powerhouses of the U.S. with the en ormous manufacturing centers of China. The Sun Yat-sen is as bland as any U.S. interstate, but it's the highway of glo balization. Though it snakes along the whole west coast of Taiwan, the key 70-k m stretch starts in Taipei's booming new Neihu district of high-tech office bui ldings and ends in Hsinchu, home to two of Taiwan's best universities, its top research center, and a world-renowned science park. Along the way, the Sun Yat- sen leads to some of the most important but anonymous tech outfits in the world : Asustek Computer, whose China factories spit out iPods and Mini Macs for Appl e (AAPL ); and Quanta Computer, the No. 1 global maker of notebook PCs and a ke y supplier to Dell (DELL ) and Hewlett-Packard. You'll also find Taiwan Semicon ductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM ), the biggest chip foundry on the planet, an ess ential partner to U.S. companies such as Qualcomm and Nvidia (NVDA ). Dozens mo re companies dot the Neihu-Hsinchu corridor. There's AU Optronics (AUTO ), a bi g supplier of liquid-crystal display panels, and Hon Hai Precision Industry, wh ich makes everything from PC components to Sony's (SNE ) PlayStation 2, and whi ch is a fast-rising rival to Flextronics International (FLEX ), the world's big gest contract manufacturer. Taken together, the revenues of Taiwan's 25 key tec h companies should hit $122 billion this year. Taiwan's success is also China's. No one knows for sure how much of China's exp orts in information and communications hardware are made in Taiwanese-owned fac tories, but the estimates run from 40% to 80%. As many as 1 million Taiwanese l ive and work on the mainland. "All the manufacturing capacity in China is overl aid with the management and marketing expertise of the Taiwanese, along with al l their contacts in the world," observes Russell Craig, of tech consultants Ver icors Inc. CROSS-STRAIT DRAMA Impressive stuff. Yet for many people around the world, Taiwan evokes only one thing: the standoff between the People's Republic of China, which considers the thriving democracy as just one of its provinces, and Taiwan President Chen Shu i-bian, who has made little secret of his dream of one day declaring Taiwan ind ependent. This cross-strait drama is now in a tense new phase, played out with dramatic effect in recent weeks. First Beijing passed an anti-secession law aut horizing an attack on Taiwan in case it moves towards independence. Taiwan resp onded with a massive anti-Beijing rally. Then came the shocker: The late April visit to the mainland by Lien Chan, Chen's chief political opponent and chairma n of Taiwan's Kuomintang (KMT). As millions of Taiwanese and Chinese watched on television, Chinese President Hu Jintao shook hands with the opposition leader at a lavish state reception in Beijing. After Lien returned to Taipei on May 3 , Hu's government sweetened its PR offensive with more goodies, including a pla n to ease restrictions on Chinese travel to Taiwan, lift tariffs on some Taiwan ese agricultural imports -- and send two giant pandas to the Taipei Zoo. To add even more surprise, Taiwanese President Chen, despite some of his supporters' fury at Lien's visit, inserted himself into the dialogue. Chen agreed to send a message to Chinese President Hu through another opposition leader, James Soong of the People First Party, who was scheduled to start a China trip on May 5. H u seems to be counting on his contacts with the opposition to increase pressure on Chen, forcing him to accept that the island is part of China. But that's a concession Chen's unlikely to make. Real reconciliation thus seems a long way off. Yet any serious attempt to lower the tension would hold huge promise for the executives who run America's IT in dustry, which depends on Taiwan for so much of its goods. A shooting war betwee n Taiwan and China would be catastrophic in human terms. And for the Western co mpanies that have built their fortunes around Taiwan, the damage would be a dir ect hit to the global economy and the Digital Age. "It would be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off," says a top executive at a U.S. high-tech giant. C ouldn't U.S. industry develop sources of IT supply that don't involve the Taiwa nese? "That's like asking, 'What's the second source for Mideast oil?' says thi s exec. "You might find it, but it's going to cost you." Insiders estimate that it would take a year and a half to even begin to replace the vast web of desig n shops and mainland factories the Taiwanese have built. "The IT model is not o ne built on second-sourcing," says Ken Wirt, a top executive for the handheld b usiness of palmOne Inc. Not that Taiwan and China aren't also extremely pragmatic. Throughout this turb ulent spring Taiwan Inc. hasn't missed a step. For instance, Acer Inc., the PC maker, increased sales by 40% in March; its models are among the top five selle rs in the world. Dell and Hewlett-Packard will source $10 billion and $21 billi on respectively from Taiwan this year, estimates Chicago-based consulting firm THT Research, which tracks contract manufacturing. Apple is boosting its order book from Taiwan companies by 28% from a year ago, to $5 billion. Quanta on Apr . 8 announced a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to c ooperate on research into the next generation of computing. Despite a cyclical downturn that has hurt profits, TSMC has embarked on a $2.6 billion ramp-up to produce more custom-designed chips than ever. Compared with a more specialized chipmaker such as Intel, "we have maybe 100 times the number of product lines," says TSMC chairman and CEO, Morris Chang. "It takes a very special expertise." China may threaten Taiwan as No. 1 IT supplier. But for now it's Taiwanese engi neers who provide ever-more-ingenious solutions to manufacturing and design con undrums. "In Taiwan, people say the U.S. understanding of outsourcing is backwa rd," says Victor Zue, co-director of the Computer Science & Artificial Intellig ence Laboratory at MIT. "It feels more like the Taiwanese are outsourcing marke ting and branding to the rest of the world." The island's high-tech industry has had to improve its skills sharply to get wh ere it is today. Barely a decade ago, Taiwan made components or assembled machi nes designed elsewhere, and was only a marginal player in more lucrative segmen ts of the electronics industry. Today its companies are increasingly proficient at original design, and dominate manufacturing in key categories. In LCD scree ns the Taiwanese have passed the Japanese and rival the Koreans. Taiwan is tops in routers, notebook computers, and cable modems. The PC industry "has really consolidated around Taiwan," says John A. Antone, Hong Kong-based head of the A sia Pacific region for Intel Corp. (INTC ), which has 400 engineers at work on the island. "That's just where the best engineering is done." How does Taiwan do it? Lower pay helps. "You look at the engineering costs in t he U.S. and compare them to Taiwan's, and we are talking about one third of the cost," says Kai Hsiao, director of global procurement for greater China at HP. Visit Taiwan-owned factories on the mainland, and you will find that assembly line wages average $120 a month. But Taiwan's advantage goes way beyond cheap labor. The island combines an entr epreneurial culture with effective government involvement. The Hsinchu-based In dustrial Technology Research Institute is a collection of labs that works close ly with local companies. It has 4,300 engineers striving to match the best that the West, Japan, and Korea can offer in fields such as microelectronics and op toelectronics. The government-backed Institute has alliances with scientists fr om MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon Universit y in the U.S. Companies such as TSMC and cross-town rival United Microelectroni cs Corp. (UMC ) have their origins in ITRI technology. The result is one of the deepest reserves of high-tech talent in the world. It starts with figures such as Chang, who was present at the creation of Taiwanese tech. Walk into Fab 12, TSMC's multibillion-dollar facility in Hsinchu, and of f to your left you'll see a giant portrait of the chairman sitting, pipe in han d, in an armchair. Surrounding him are scenes from his life -- as a child in Ho ng Kong, as a student at Harvard, and as TSMC chief at the company's debut on t he New York Stock Exchange. But the silver-haired Chang, 73, isn't done yet. He 's still working hard to beat rivals UMC in Taiwan and Semiconductor Manufactur ing International Corp. (SMIC) in Shanghai. He's also pushing Taiwan's politici ans to build up the island's schooling. "I wish we had a world-class university ," he says. Chang and other tech leaders blend Western values -- Chang took liberal-arts cl asses at Harvard before studying mechanical engineering at MIT -- with Asian cu lture. One minute Jonney Shih, Asustek's 52-year-old founder, will be discussin g Six Sigma best practices and the next minute he'll be evoking the Changshan s nake described in Sun Tzu's Art of War. When attacked at one end, the serpent c ounterattacks with the other. "We need that kind of fast reaction," says Shih. The quick reflexes of Taiwanese like Shih make all the difference. Unlike Korea , where Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. dominate, Taiwan is com posed of smaller and nimbler outfits. When Taiwanese companies get too large, t hey tend to spin off businesses and refocus. Hence, in 2001 computer maker Acer Inc. begat consumer electronics company BenQ and LCD panel maker AU Optronics. The Hsinchu-based chip design houses spun off from UMC include MediaTek and No vatek, a designer of chips for LCDs. Some of Taiwan's most important tech companies have also grown by acquiring tec hnology from elsewhere. Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. (CMO) licensed LCD techno logy from Fujitsu Ltd. (FIJSY ) and hired top engineers to come up with the res t of the expertise it needed to become a leading LCD producer. All these businesses excel at serving corporate customers. Eighteen months ago, after Intel had made a big bet on Centrino, the wireless Internet system for n otebook PCs, the American company sought out a partner that could quickly get C entrino computers to the market. So Intel teamed up with engineers at Acer. Wit hin three months, says Acer CEO J.T. Wang, they not only came up with a high-en d Centrino notebook sold under the Acer brand but also mid-tier and even entry- level PCs using Intel's new technology. Taiwanese companies will do just about anything to please customers. When Quant a was first working on what promised to be a hot new design for a top client, i t had to work in total secrecy. Quanta executives guaranteed the U.S. customer that all work would be done in the middle of the night. They even had the assem bly line draped in concealing black. Other Taiwanese companies combine discreti on with an ability to handle even the smallest orders. HP's Hsiao says he place s orders for as few as 10 PCs of a specialized configuration. The Taiwanese can process and ship such an order in 48 hours. "They can change direction overnig ht," says Hsiao. This do-whatever-it-takes ethos has led Taiwan's businesses to move to the main land at astonishing speed. "In 1999 we had about 300 employees" in China, says Alexander Lee, head of operations for Asustek in Suzhou, China. "Now we have mo re than 45,000." Issues of loyalty don't enter the equation. Acer CEO Wang rece ntly asked his own Taiwanese suppliers if, as good citizens, they'd keep some p roduction in Taiwan. "Their answer was: 'No way,"' he says. The Taiwanese also play a vital role for rivals on the mainland. Liu Chuanzhi, chairman of Beijing computer company Lenovo Group Ltd. (LNVNG ), which just com pleted its purchase of IBM's PC division, says Lenovo sources components from T aiwanese companies. According to THT Research, Lenovo even buys notebooks from Quanta, Compal, and MiTAC. Liu says that's not the case. Most important of all, the Taiwanese are the real developers of China's semicon ductor industry. Chinese companies such as SMIC (SMI ) depend on squads of Taiw anese executives for knowhow. TSMC is still far ahead but it is starting to foc us on China, too. The Taipei government has allowed TSMC to invest $900 million for its own plant in China. In effect, Taiwan is hoping to control design and innovation while giving over much of its manufacturing to China. When U.S. companies come to Taiwan today, t hey say, "'This is what we want. Do you have it?"' says Billy Ho, president of MiTAC, which makes smart phones, PDAs, and servers. Increasingly, the Taiwanese do. Two years ago, MiTAC decided to upgrade the PDA s it sells under its own brand name as well as under several different names in Europe. In discussions with the sales team, Ho recalled how, when he lived nea r Birmingham, England, he would get baffled by the layout of the city streets. A PDA with GPS, the satellite-controlled global positioning system often found in cars, was the answer. Today, MiTAC is No. 3 globally in PDAs, behind only De ll and HP. The Taiwanese know they're good at such innovations. But they also know they ar e being squeezed on price even while they are under relentless pressure to be m ore creative. "Margins have come screaming out of the PC business because produ cts have become very commoditized," says Michael Marks, CEO of Flextronics Corp . Net margins at Asustek have fallen to 6.4%, from 19% in 2001. The company's 2 004 net profit of $484 million was 7% lower than what it was in 2001, although sales nearly tripled in the same period to $8 billion. Both Quanta and Compal h ave suffered from falling profit margins too, despite fast-rising sales. Some analysts also wonder how long the Taiwanese will have the edge in chips. " I don't think Taiwan is in the driver's seat anymore," says James C. Mulvenon, co-author of a 2004 Rand Corporation study on Taiwan's and China's chip industr ies, which concludes that European and Japanese chipmakers will provide China w ith technology the Taiwanese refuse to share. One way out is to find new markets. "We have to get into the next wave of produ cts," says Ray Chen, president of Compal. "It can be TVs, cell phones, home dig ital media centers. We don't know yet." To do that better, Compal plans to doub le its R&D team. Quanta's beefing up too. In its $20 million partnership with M IT, Quanta is looking at using artificial intelligence to link digital devices that have different operating systems. Quanta boss Barry Lam also identifies au tos as a promising area. As control and display systems in cars go digital, the Taiwanese can apply their expertise in making complex components for small spa ces. The other way to stay ahead for Taiwan is to create its own brands and maintain solid margins by delivering better performance and design. A leader in the bra nding effort is BenQ, which has its own brand of thin-screen TVs and MP3 player s. Since its launch in 2001, BenQ has stressed in-house design to make its bran ded products stand out. Manfred Wang, who runs the BenQ design center, leads a team of 70 designers who have, among other things, come up with a PC monitor wh ose base can be folded up against it, taking up much less space in shipping. "O ur designers are aware of the manufacturing process and that's a big advantage, " says Wang, who learned his skills in Germany and once worked at Porsche. At the heart of Taiwan's effort to reinvent itself is the government research i nstitute, ITRI. It's into everything from new wireless networks to nanotubes th at provide backlighting for displays. It's also trying to mix the hard sciences with something softer. Enter Room 131 of Block 53 on the main campus, and you' ll find the Creativity Lab. The place looks more like an advertising agency tha n a high-tech center, with its stuffed animals and a comfy couch for a staff th at includes artists, psychologists, and an anthropologist, in addition to engin eers. The idea is that getting techies together with liberal arts types will he lp designers think more broadly, says Wen-Jean Hsueh, a PhD in mechanical engin eering from California Institute of Technology who is the lab's head. "We know we have strong manufacturing and engineering," she says. "But we have to look b eyond this." Even this fresh effort has to build on Taiwan's engineering corps, which can't expand enough to meet all of Taiwan's needs. With so many companies expanding r esearch and development, "we have to fight very hard to get experienced guys," says Hsiao-ping Lin, head of Faraday Technology, which specializes in chip desi gn services. He hopes to hire Indian engineers, but adds, "in the long run, we will set up an R&D center in mainland China." That shift to China is understandably of great concern to Taiwan's political an d business leaders. But it may be inevitable. "The market here is so much more important than Taiwan's," says Lawrence Ho, the Taiwan-born owner of online mus ic startup 8LaNetwork Inc., which has its headquarters in Beijing's trendy Jian wai Soho district. Ho also appreciates how hard his mainland employees are will ing to work -- as many as 90 hours a week. Taiwan clearly has lots to worry about, but it's also renowned for its resilien ce. Intel's John Antone compares Taiwan to long-distance runners who are being challenged but who are still in the lead. "As long as they're committed to run very aggressively," he says, "I don't see anyone catching them." Competitors be warned: Taiwan will do everything it can to stay in the race. By Bruce Einhorn, with Matt Kovac in Taipei, Pete Engardio in New York, Dexter Roberts in Beijing, Frederik Balfour in Shanghai, and Cliff Edwards in San Mate o, Calif. --

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