Posted on Dec 17, 2023
The secret sauce for Taiwan's chip superstardom
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When 23-year-old Shih Chin-tay boarded a plane for the United States in the summer of 1969, he was flying to a different world.
He grew up in a fishing village surrounded by sugarcane fields. He had attended university in Taiwan's capital Taipei, then a city of dusty streets and grey apartment buildings where people rarely owned cars.
Now he was off to Princeton University. The US had just a put a man on the Moon and the Boeing 747 in the skies. Its economy was larger than those of the Soviet Union, Japan, Germany and France combined.
"When I landed, I was shocked," Dr Shih, now 77, says. "I thought to myself: Taiwan is so poor, I must do something to try and help make it better off."
And he did. Dr Shih and a group of young, ambitious engineers transformed an island that exported sugar and t-shirts into an electronics powerhouse.
He grew up in a fishing village surrounded by sugarcane fields. He had attended university in Taiwan's capital Taipei, then a city of dusty streets and grey apartment buildings where people rarely owned cars.
Now he was off to Princeton University. The US had just a put a man on the Moon and the Boeing 747 in the skies. Its economy was larger than those of the Soviet Union, Japan, Germany and France combined.
"When I landed, I was shocked," Dr Shih, now 77, says. "I thought to myself: Taiwan is so poor, I must do something to try and help make it better off."
And he did. Dr Shih and a group of young, ambitious engineers transformed an island that exported sugar and t-shirts into an electronics powerhouse.
The secret sauce for Taiwan's chip superstardom
Posted from bbc.comPosted in these groups: 
Taiwan
Taiwan
Posted 12 mo ago
Responses: 2
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel good day Brother William, always informational and of the most interesting. Thanks for sharing, have a blessed day!
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This is a story of a student out of poverty who rose beyond his own imagination and in return he paid back to society selflessly changing Taiwan into an electronic powerhouse; a chip manufacturing hub from a sugar and t-shirt exporter.
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