The Executive Yuan yesterday launched a policy implementation plan for the government’s “Asian Silicon Valley” initiative aimed at capturing 5 percent of the global Internet of Things (IoT) market by 2025.
The plan aims to drive the research and development of IoT technologies and products, improve the nation’s start-up ecosystem, connect Taiwanese businesses with international start-up communities and build a domestic supply chain, National Development Council Deputy Minister Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said.
The seven-year plan has received a NT$11.3 billion (US$361.18 million) budget this year in hopes of making Taiwan a hub of next-generation industries, Kung said.
Its goal is to increase Taiwan’s share of the global IoT market from 3.8 percent last year to 5 percent by 2025; transform 100 start-ups into publicly traded companies; and establish three world-class companies that offer total-solution services for the information technology industry.
“We hope to see at least 100 start-ups succeed or set up research centers in Taiwan over the next seven years. To succeed means that they achieve IPO [initial public offering] or are acquired,” Kung said.
The Financial Supervisory Commission is to establish a NT$2 billion angel fund to help start-ups raise early capital, and the government is to offer a NT$10 billion start-up investment fund for late-stage venture capital financing and another NT$100 billion to help firms go through the IPO process, he said.
IoT technologies and products are expected to bring in NT$4.6 trillion to NT$9.5 trillion in annual revenue by 2025 and contribute to an additional 0.9 percent to 1.7 percent increase to the nation’s economic growth.
“An innovation center will be built in Taoyuan, which has been chosen as the major base of the Asian Silicon Valley plan, as it has become a burgeoning e-commerce hub connecting cities in western Taiwany,” Kung said.
The Executive Yuan will establish an implementation office headed by Minister Without Portfolio and programming expert Audrey Tang (唐鳳).
The Asian Silicon Valley plan is at the heart of the government’s project to develop five innovative industries and failure to carry out the plan will dramatically affect the development of other industries, Premier Lin Chuan (林全) said.
“Taiwan’s role in the Third Industrial Revolution ... was as a producer of low value-added products, and the nation has to transition its industrial structure to catch up with industry 4.0,” Lin said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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