Taiwan

Economy:
GDP (purchasing power parity): $717.7 billion
GDP – per capita (PPP): $29,800
Population: 22,974,347

Language: Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin Chinese (official), Taiwanese (Min), Hakka dialects

Internet Penetration
9 million domain names registered
15,143,000 million users online

Paid Search Engines in Taiwan:
Google (64.9% market share)
Yahoo (18.8% market share)
Microsoft (9.4 % market share)
Ask (3.9% market share)
AOL (3.0% market share)

About Taiwan:
Taiwan, one of Asia’s major “economic tigers”, is an island off China where members of China’s ruling party fled following the victory of the Communist Party in the Chinese Revolt of 1945 to 1949.

From a country with a measly GDP per capita of $170 in 1962, Taiwan has grown to become one of the world’s developed economies, with an impressive per capita of $29,800 as of 2009.

Taiwan’s enormous economic growth is referred to as the Taiwan miracle, fueled by a largely capitalist economy and technology exports that account for 70% of its robust GDP, which has grown at an average of eight percent during the past three decades.

The island had been under Japanese rule since 1895, when a military defeat forced China to cede the island to Japan. After 50 years of Japanese rule, Taiwan was reverted back to China after Japan’s defeat in World War II.
Members of the ruling Kuomintang Party (KMT) in China retreated to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War, which the communists won in 1949. The party brought with them sizeable gold and currency reserves from mainland China, which helped stabilized prices and mitigated hyperinflation in the island.

More significantly, the KMT was composed of members of the intellectual and business elite from Mainland China who enacted many laws, including land reform, to spur Taiwan’s economic progress. It implemented a policy of import substitution that turned out to be the seed to spark Taiwan’s export driven economy.

Taiwan is so heavily dependent on its exports that global demands adversely affect its economy. In 2009, for example, GDP slipped by 2.5% primarily because of a 20% decline in exports from the previous year.
Far more critical than Taiwan’s export dependence is its diplomatic isolation, caused by its long running feud with mainland China, which considers Taiwan a province of China. With mainland China’s growing clout as a world power, Taiwan is increasingly becoming politically isolated and unable to enter into free trade arrangements with the rest of East Asia and other Asian neighbors.

A bright spot in this diplomatic row is the significant increase in economic activities between the two Chinas, with the mainland overtaking the US as Taiwan’s second largest source of imports after Japan. Taiwan is likewise pouring in more direct investments into China, after Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou was sworn into office in May 2008.

China has positively responded to Taiwan’s investment overtures by signing three financial agreements covering banking, securities, and insurance that took effect in January 2010. More cross-Strait negotiations on economic cooperation are on stream between China and Taiwan en route to what economic pundits believe to be another wave of economic miracle, if not an end to a long diplomatic feud.