ABSTRACT

Taiwan’s technology policy 1 toward the high-technology sectors embodies seemingly contradictory principles. The Taiwanese state has actively cultivated a rich set of international interactions with firms from advanced industrial countries. The state has not tried to terminate these links despite the fact that these interactions arguably create more dependence on the outside world than independence from it. This globalist orientation appears to clash with another fundamental principle of Taiwan’s technology policy — innovation as a nationalist project to build up the domestic technology and industrial infrastructure in order to develop the national economy as a whole. How has Taiwan resolved this apparent contradiction in its technology policy?