Taiwan has been ranked as the ninth most digitally competitive country this year, moving up two places from last year, among the 64 countries evaluated by the Swiss-based International Institute for Management Development (IMD), according to a report that was released yesterday.
The IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, which used 54 indicators based on three major factors, showed Taiwan in third place in technology, a jump from sixth last year.
For the other two major factors — knowledge and future readiness — Taiwan was ranked 18th and seventh respectively, with the latter representing a rise from eighth place last year.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
Meanwhile, among the 54 indicators, Taiwan took the top spot in five areas, namely total research and development (R&D) personnel per capita, information technology (IT) and media stock market capitalization, mobile broadband subscribers, agility of companies, and use of big data and analytics.
Other noteworthy standings included the indicators of higher education achievement and total expenditure on R&D — two areas in which Taiwan rose in the rankings to third place in the IMD report.
Taiwan’s leading performances in fields such as IT, media stock market capitalization and mobile broadband can be attributed to the government’s efforts to provide subsidies and other incentives to telecommunications companies to construct and expand the 5G network infrastructure, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said.
Regarding the future readiness factor, the ministry said that the category primarily measures the degree of digital transformation in a country, and Taiwan ranked first in two indicators — agility of companies and the use of big data and analytics.
This is because Taiwan’s economic model, which features small and medium-sized enterprises, has the advantages of flexibility and quick response to market changes, the ministry said.
The top rankings reflect the government’s effective efforts to subsidize small, medium and micro enterprises to promote digital transformation and technological innovations such as cloud computing and data analysis, the ministry said.
The assessments in the IMD’s latest report would serve as a reference for the government’s policymaking, as part of the efforts to develop Taiwan’s digital economy, promote information security and expand public-private collaboration to achieve digital transformation, the ministry said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS