Fri, Jun 01, 2001 page1

• Miracle-maker passes on

  TITAN OF INDUSTRY One of the great architects of Taiwan's tremendous economic success over the past decades, Li Kwoh-ting died yesterday at the age of 92

  • By Joyce Huang / STAFF REPORTER
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  Senior presidential advisor Li Kwoh-ting (李國鼎), who has been dubbed the father of Taiwan's economic miracle, passed away yesterday morning around 8am at the National Taiwan University Hospital.

  Li, 92, had been in a coma since May 21 after suffering a stroke.

  

  Li Kwoh-ting.

  TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO

  After learning of Li's death, Secretary-General to the President Yu Shyi-kun, on behalf of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), yesterday forwarded their condolences to Li's family, praising Li's tremendous contribution to Taiwan's economic and high-tech development.

  The Institute for Information Industry (資策會), where Li served as an honorary board member, will establish a funeral committee headed by another board member, Wang Chou-ming (王昭明). Details for the ceremony will be ironed out next week.

  Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) said yesterday: "Li was a remarkable person. Many people admire his contribution [to the country] and we are not likely to find another role model like Li again," Lee said.

  Having served as head of the government's economic, financial and high-technology ministries for over 35 years, Li has been dubbed the country's "father of technological development" and "father of finance and the economy."

  As a major economic policy-maker under former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), Li advocated the establishment of the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (新竹科學園區) in 1980, which was later dubbed Taiwan's Silicon Valley.

  Li also helped develop Taiwan's semiconductor industry by asking the present chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Morris Chang (張忠謀), to return from the US and head Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (工研院).

  "If it had not been for Li, TSMC's achievements would never have been possible," Chang once told the media.

  One of the key architects of Taiwan's economic miracle, Li was invited to attend several international conferences in China and met with Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Premier Zhu Rongji (朱鎔基) in 1993, promoting "Taiwan's experiences." At the time, Li had envisioned that the development of cross-strait trade should be built on the basis of mutual benefits and complementary relations.

  Li, who had put particular emphasis on information technology, however, also attracted severe criticism for ignoring the development of small and medium-sized enterprises by favoring larger firms with more government resources.

  "In terms of a lack of government financing to small and medium-enterprises, [Li's policies] forced them to go to the black market for capital," Wu Hui-lin (吳惠林), a research fellow at the Chung-Hua Institute for Economic Research, was once quoted as saying.

  Wu added that Li's emphasis at the time on only cultivating talent in the fields of technology and electronics put undue strain on the progress of educational reform, shifting funds away from school programs that taught subjects other than technology and electronics.

  Industry tycoon Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) once opined that Li alone didn't deserve all the credit for building Taiwan into a technology-driven island, since it took teamwork from all domestic and foreign industries to accomplish the goal.

  But the overwhelming consensus is that Li was a driving force in leading Taiwan to become, as of last year, the 14th-largest trading nation in the world.
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