The Hot New Tech Cities

You could argue that as tech cities boom, Silicon Valley can no longer claim to be the sun around which the high-tech world revolves. It may have to settle for the status of brightest star in an expanding constellation of high-tech business and culture. Valley dwellers, of course, harrumph that even the most successful tech cities won't really put a dent in their dominance. But while nobody does it better than the Valley, its ideas, and its dreams, are eminently exportable.

That's the lesson of Taiwan's Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park, an 18-year-old government-seeded enclave carved out of farmland and abandoned factory zones 80 miles from Taipei. Among its many chief executives are heavy-hitting CEOs like Wu Tao-yuan, a Stanford grad who gave up his cushy stucco house in the Los Altos Hills to return to his homeland. He joined Umax Data Systems, a company that now claims 30 percent of the lucrative worldwide scanner market. Hsinchu also has the world's largest semiconductor foundry and the giant PC maker Acer. Its engineers, most of whom cut their programming teeth in U.S. universities, are almost indistinguishable from the nerds who park their Volvos in Santa Clara parking lots: they eat at McDonald's, crank out code while their earphones throb with rock music and pack the local MIT alumni club.

OBVIOUSLY, HSINCHU IS not California. ""Diversity'' is a word that doesn't translate: of 70,000 high-tech workers, fewer than 100 are non-Chinese. Many of the engineers bunk in spartan dormitories, commuting to their families on Wednesday nights and weekends. And Asian traditions don't exactly encourage the ""failure is cool'' Valley ethic. ""There are a number of small companies that after eight or nine years are still not doing well,'' says Wu, ""but they think: if I go under, what will my parents, my relatives and my friends think of me?'' Finally, the standard-test-obsessed educational system discourages free thinkers.

Still, despite the regional recession, revenues from the 250 companies in the park alone are expected to account for a tenth of GNP. Perhaps more important, the business practices common in Hsinchu--like granting stock options to all employees and discouraging nepotism--are being adopted all over the country.

In other words, Hsinchu, just like all the other tech cities in the United States and abroad, may never be Silicon Valley--but it doesn't need to be. By adopting some of the Valley's best traits, it has helped to decalcify Taiwanese businesses practices without snuffing out tradition entirely. Every afternoon under the stainless-steel arches in the gleaming front lobby of the Umax headquarters building, rows and rows of employees sit cross-legged on mats. They're practicing qigong breathing methods. Tomorrow they will return to their keyboards, not only energized but flowing with inner peace--ready to root out software bugs, embellish business plans and maybe even cook up an idea for some new start-up of their own.

That's what tech cities are all about. They realize the Silicon Valley dream--somewhere else.

© 1998