The science and technology industry needs to be injected with new blood and innovation, or else Taiwan risks economic decline, National Science Council (NSC) officials said at a press conference yesterday.
“Though the high technology industry has contributed tremendously to Taiwan’s prosperity, there is strong evidence that incremental improvement within the current industrial base would not be enough to sustain healthy economical growth,” said Foresight Taiwan project leader Eugene Wong (王佑曾), a Academia Sinica academician.
Citing Nobel economics laureate Robert Fogel’s predictions, Wong said that many strong economies in the world, including Japan and the EU, might face decline by 2040.
“Taiwan currently sits on the threshold of being a wealthy country; the question is, where will Taiwan be in 2040?” Wong said.
To maintain its current world ranking, Taiwan would need annual economical growth of 4 percent for the next 30 or so years, Wong said, however, “this would not be easy.”
In fact, though the high-tech industry boomed in the 1980s, contrary to many people’s perceptions, Taiwan’s growth rate peaked in 1980 and has been in decline ever since, he said.
Science and technology are still the key to reviving the economy, he said.
However, new components in industry need to be employed and this would be the aim of the Foresight project, he said.
“Taiwan’s high-tech industry has been an ‘adaptive’ economy instead of an ‘innovative’ one — our societal role models are owners of big businesses, however, their success was not built upon inventing new things,” he said.
“The US, for example, will remain the world leader in 2040 [Fogel said] mainly because of two reasons: its strong and diverse demographics [due to its open immigration policy], and also, no country in the world is more innovative than the US; its societal heroes are innovators such as Edison and Einstein,” Wong said.
Though Taiwan has unfavorable demographics, it can find its own competitive edge by creating new technologies and applying them to end products, Wong said.
“It is also extremely important to improve our service-sector — 70 percent of the nation’s GDP depends on the service industry, however, though Taiwan has a highly educated workforce, many service jobs are poor utilizations of our human resource capital,” he said.
As such, the project last year sponsored eight programs, six of which were early-stage technology research and development programs, one was a high value-added service program [medical tourism], and one aimed to scope emerging technologies, he said.
This year, the program will expand its NT$60 million (US$2 million) annual budget to about NT$100 million to host three new ideas: germination of startups, energy storage technology development and risk management programs, Wong said.
“The current world financial crisis stems from a failure in management of risks — however, it also presents special windows of opportunity for new economies like Taiwan,” he said.
“Science and technology are already important to the nation’s economy, but their roles can be further enhanced in major ways,” he said.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS