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This is gonna be a long answer as I know the country very well. I’ve pinned this answer because it’s come to cover multiple topics that I consider essential such as the Taiwan Strait issue, and I’ll keep updating it if need be. You can practically view this as an introduction of Taiwan that doesn’t simply only answer the question it’s supposed to. My motivation of developing this answer into a complex pack instead of just replying to the question alone, is that I’ve figured I wouldn’t be able to refute each and every lie and every single bit of fallacious information intentionally constructed that many Quorans that are up to no good present. Especially regarding Taiwan’s legal status. These Quorans are more often than not nationals of the People’s Republic of China, regardless where they live, study or work. Hence, I may as well just write a long answer that gives facts and truth. Therefore, you’ll be able to know such Quorans or the people alike are lying, if you happen to have read this answer beforehand.First things first, let us learn something about Taiwan a little bit before trying to answer the question. Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, is an island nation populated by about 23.5 million people, and one of the 5 permanent members of the United Nation Security Council that founded the UN until its quitting in 1971. Now, simply by knowing this, we already realise immediately that Taiwan’s unfortunate in the first place to begin with. Why? Well firstly, it has a terrible size of population. An ideal size of population is either smaller than 10 million people, so the country can rather easily grow economically as it has fewer people to feed, such as Singapore, Slovenia, Ireland, Israel, Sweden and Switzerland, or bigger than 40 million people, where the country acquires a domestic market large enough to support itself as an economic bonus to cultivate conglomerates despite having far more people to take care of than small nations. Taiwan, on the other hand, has an embarrassing population size – 23.5 million citizens, which means Taiwan gets neither the advantage of a small population nor of a large domestic market. There is no such thing big enough to be called a conglomerate in Taiwan – not even ASUS, HTC, Acer, TSMC or Foxconn as they’re just medium-sized companies at a larger scale, compared with real conglomerates such as those in Japan and South Korea. The population size of Seoul Capital Area is about 25 million people; as for Tokyo Metro (Greater Tokyo Area), the number is around 38 million. Both cities already larger than Taiwan, which is a state; so as you can see, our human resource pool is really small. Secondly, Taiwan’s truly tiny, and has literally zero valuable natural resources. Australia has a population of 24 million inhabitants, very much like Taiwan, yet it’s 214 times bigger than Taiwan in area dimension and owns quite a lot of natural resources. As a result, the embarrassing population size of Australia’s doesn’t affect the country much. Thirdly, Taiwan’s isolated, geographically and politically. Countries that are EU members usually develop pretty fast because it’s easy for them to acquire assistance of other EU members, financially and technologically. Imagine you’re a country sitting next or close to France or Germany – both are highly developed. In such a scenario, you should feel guilty if you manage not to develop quickly well. Unlike nations in the EU, Taiwan’s rejected by other countries due to the presence of the communist China. Taiwan’s not even an OECD member; in fact, Taiwan isn’t a member of most international organisations at all. Although based on international law, the government that Taiwan’s currently running under, namely the Republic of China (ROC), just like any other nations or political entities in today’s world, has never acquired the ownership of the island of Taiwan [Note: please navigate to ‘Additional Content’ section for further reading if you’re interested], including Penghu and the other Taiwanese isles, as the ROC is only simply being in charge of Taiwan under the name of ‘military mandate’ authorized by ‘General Order No.1’, a military order signed between the Allies and the Empire of Japan after WWII (hence it has nothing to do with the concept of ‘mandate’ written in the United Nation Charter), resulting in the communist China’s illegality to lay a claim on the ownership of Taiwan due to the ROC’s not even owning Taiwan itself, in any near future however, the Taiwanese will probably not amend their ROC Constitution to establish a government in a new name – for instance, ‘the Republic of Taiwan’ or something – to make use of the right called ‘self-determination’, because it’d rise an economic and political tide worldwide if Taiwan did so, and might cause harm. Self-determination is a rightful means by international law and the Charter of the United Nation for a people to establish a legitimate government of their own and to acquire the ownership of the territory in which they establish the government (in the case of Taiwan, the ‘territory’ refers to to the island of Taiwan and the other Taiwanese isles, and the ‘people’ refer to the people on them, all of which have been governed by the ROC since 1945 – an illegitimate government as the ROC doesn’t possess the ownership of any of these land). Based on international law and the law of the UN, the Taiwanese have absolute every right to implement self-determination to have the ROC evolve into an ROT (Republic of Taiwan), but it may come along with harm. Not to mention, despite the United States having made it clear that America agrees One-China-Policy, but objects to communist China’s claim on Taiwan, offering ‘Taiwan Relations Act’ (the entire content of ‘Taiwan Relations Act’ is a part of the law of United States), which states the United States will automatically acknowledge any successor to the current governing authorities on Taiwan, meaning an ROT succeeding the ROC will be immediately recognized by America, along with providing necessary assistance should a China-to-Taiwan invasion breakout, the U.S. yet will certainly not want Taiwan to take such an aggressive move when there’s still peace between the Strait. As a result, the establishment of a new government of Taiwan will be implemented only when a war between the Strait will occur; in other words, should China attack Taiwan, an ROT would be built. In consequence, until the day comes, Taiwan will always be rejected continuously by most international organisations. All of these, have negative impact on Taiwan’s development. Nevertheless, what’s fortunate is the Taiwanese are smart. They have the highest average IQ, which is 108, followed by the Singaporeans (107), the Chinese (107), the Hong Kongese (106), the South Koreans (106), the Japanese (105), the Finns (103) and the rest other 183 countries, according to the research done by Heiner Rindermann, a reputative German scientist specializing in this field, whose studies are considered far more reliable than Lynn and Vanhanen’s by other scientists, including Earl Hunt[1][1][1][1][2][2][2][2], who’s literally Einstein in the field of human and artificial intelligence. The Taiwanese also have the largest standard deviation (12.66) of intelligence among all East Asian populations according to Rindermann’s research, larger than Japan (12.6), China (11.89; Hong Kong and Macau included) and South Korea (11.61), also larger than France (12.39), Finland (10.93), Canada (11.38), Austria (12.51), Sweden (12.39), Iceland (12.36), Belgium (12.61), Denmark (12.55), Spain (12.1), Ireland (12.58), the Netherlands (11.31) and many other non-Asian nations. The conclusion drawn here being Taiwan’s a country that has nothing but pure brainpower; that’s the only bit of luckiness we can find in Taiwan’s miserable background. This has been very important.Now we have learnt some basic information about Taiwan. It’s time to answer the question: is Taiwan a developed country? Of course, it is.It's not easy at all to determine whether a nation’s developed or not, but there are still statistics which can help provide a more accurate estimation on the status of a country’s development.In New Taipei City. I don’t own this image.In the ‘70s, Taiwan was still an impoverished country where people weren’t even properly fed, yet within less than 3 decades, Taiwan quickly reached a developed status. Such can also be observed by looking at the average height of the Taiwanese. Imperial College London has conducted thus far the largest-scale investigation into average heights of adults of countries all over the world, and published their research on eLife, a prestigious academic journal in biomedical and life sciences, by eLife Sciences Publications. The research’s indicated that the Taiwanese average 174.5cm and 161.5cm for males and females respectively, both second only to the South Koreans (male: 174.9cm, female: 162.3cm) in Asia. You can read the full study here[3][3][3][3].Anyone would be a fool to think people’s cognitive abilities determine everything regarding a country’s development, yet it’d also be naïve to believe these two things have no relation. Heiner Rindermann’s studies on human intelligence have been considered far more reliable than those published by Lynn and Vanhanen. In 2007, a Rindermann’s study, titled ‘The g‐factor of International Cognitive Ability Comparisons: the Homogeneity of Results in PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and IQ‐Tests Across Nations’ (you can obtain the full study here[4][4][4][4]), has investigated cognitive abilities (IQ) of people all over the globe, taking data from the results in PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and pure IQ tests all into consideration. The conclusion’s indicated the Taiwanese have the highest average IQ at 108, followed by the Singaporeans (107) and the Chinese (107). The Taiwanese also have the largest standard deviation (SD) at 12.66 in East Asia, larger than the Japanese (12.6), the Chinese (11.89) and the South Koreans (11.61), also larger than the French (12.39) and the Danish (12.55). In the image above, the left bell curve belongs to the Taiwanese, and the one on the right belongs to a country (which should remain anonymous) that has one of the largest SD at 16.07. You can see pretty clearly that a large SD can compensate for a lower mean, which is why I believe understanding the IQ bell curve of a population can help make better policies for the country’s development. For example, if you’re in charge of governing the country on the right, you’d want to make sure that you do your best to make the talents stay instead of letting them migrate to the USA, or you’d be left with only a low average-IQ population, which would hinder the development of the country.Economy-wise, as of 2018 last forecast according to the database (updated in February, 2018) of the Directorate-General of Budget, a department of the Executive Yuan, Taiwan has its nominal GDP per capita at 25,893 USD. The Directorate-General of Budget doesn’t forecast PPP GDP per capita numbers, but based on its mathematical-economic models, the figure is about 53,720 USD. Outdated statistics, such as the IMF’s WEO database (updated in October, 2017), forecasted that Taiwan’s GDP per capita based on exchange rates (nominal) and purchasing-power parity (PPP) would be at $24,889 and $51,637 respectively. The IMF will update its database in mid to late April, and I expect the figures to be higher than those currently (as of February, 2018) from the Taiwanese Government in that the IMF uses slightly different mathematical-economic models from the Executive Yuan’s [2018/05/05 Update: so, the IMF’s updated its WEO database in April, predicting the numbers for Taiwan’s GDP per capita will be USD 25,977 (nominal) and USD 52,305 (PPP) respectively; I expect the figures to further grow higher as we get closer to the end of the year]. The IMF’s models usually end up giving higher final numbers of GDP per capita despite usually predicting slower growth than does the Directorate-General of Budget. This is of course not saying there’s no exception. GDP per capita figures from the IMF, whether higher or lower, the gap between them and those from the Executive Yuan usually lies between 10 to 150 USD of a range. Every year, major updates of the IMF’s WEO database are scheduled in April and September/October, which renew forecast for all economies, while minor updates, delivered in January and July, only renew 16 main economies, of which 4 are in Asia – Saudi Arabia, China, India and Japan. Anyway, the IMF or not, all sorts of economic statistics seem to suggest Taiwan’s GDP per capita figures are high enough to pass for a first-world economy while still being growing at a significantly faster pace - at 2-3% on average - than the older developed nations (as Taiwan’s quite new) who yield a growth rate of less than 1% averagely such as Japan, Germany, Italy, France and the UK.Taiwan’s GDP per capita (PPP) has been forecast at $52,305 for 2018 according to the IMF WEO Database last updated in April, 2018.Nominal GDP is greatly dependent on exchange rates, so weaker currencies (in comparison with the United State dollar) usually have an inevitable disadvantage converting to GDP under nominal terms. On the other hand, countries using stronger currencies, although not always, usually have prettier nominal GDP numbers even when in fact not being as competitive industrially, typical examples being Greece and Portugal, if it weren’t for their using Euro, having higher nominal value than USD, their nominal GDP would be much worse than where they’re now, considering both of them are industrially weak. The Big Mac Index (2017 data) has indicated Taiwan’s official currency (New Taiwan dollar) is the one most severely underestimated among all official currencies of East Asian countries, that the nominal value of NTD has to be 40.5% higher to meet its true value[5][5][5][5], whereas the other official currencies of East Asian nations have much smaller gaps between their nominal and true values - 19.9% for the Japanese yen, 4.3% for the South Korean won, and 27.3% for the Reminbi. In the past, the Taiwan Government has always played the economic game via a safe approach by keeping the exchange rates of NTD as low as possible in that Taiwan relies greatly on export, and believed if letting the currency naturally revaluate to reach its true value, the Taiwanese economy would shrink as it would be much more expensive to purchase Taiwanese goods for foreign customers, but now it’s been proven that’s actually wrong thinking. Ever since Ing-Wen Tsai and her administrations’ve taken over the leadership, Taiwan’s official currency has been undergoing revaluation and now (May, 2018) its nominal value’s been 10% higher than that the same month 2 years ago, at the same time Taiwan’s export is booming, no sign of shrinkage at all even when the global economy isn’t particularly good. In April 2018, the IMF’s predicted Taiwan’s GDP per capita (nominal) will be USD 25,977 (Taiwan’s nominal GDP per capita was $22,540 in 2016, and $21,888 back in 2013. Thank you so much, Mr Ma, I didn’t expect much from you to begin with), and I expect the figure to further grow higher as we get closer to the end of the year.This is a chart that I made according to the IMF WEO Database, updated in October 2018 (source: here[6][6][6][6]). Both lines represent GDP per capita of Taiwan from 2017 to 2023, but the red one is based on purchasing-power parity while the green one is based on exchange rates. The nominal GDP per capita forecast for 2018 dropped a little bit than in April due to USD appreciation in late September, but this should only be temporary and I think in the long run NTD will still be going through appreciation against USD. As you can see, Taiwan’s GDP per capita based on PPP is strikingly higher (basically more than double) than the nominal one and is still growing like crazy. This is rare for a developed economy like Taiwan. If the pattern continues, Taiwan’s gonna make it to the top 5 wealthiest nations in the world based on GDP per capita PPP by 2030.Currency appreciation is a double blade because while the nominal value of your currency goes up, you may lose competitiveness at the end for your products have become more expensive. But this is not saying appreciation should be avoided - the key is, has your industry been ready? Taiwan’s about to experience a fundamentally major change of industry (I’m referring to manufacturing, especially those that are technology-and-knowledge-intensive), and it has something to do with a new material - named ‘High-Entropy Alloys’[7][7][7][7][8][8][8][8]- that Taiwan’s invented along with the new areas it opens for humans to explore. These materials will overhaul mankind’s industrial development roadmap and have proven their great commercial value. This will bring directly economic benefit to Taiwan as Taiwan’s been the only holder of crucial patents of such materials. Other countries, also their companies, institutes and organsisations, including those even as prestigious as USA Air Force and NASA, can’t develop products using these materials without paying royalty to Taiwan. This is a complicated topic and so i’ll further introduce more about these materials, but a real detailed introduction won’t be possible because that would at least double the length of this answer when this answer’s already very long (I don't know if Quora has word limit for an answer but if there is, I may be the first person to hit that. What an achievement!). Anyway, my point here is - Taiwan, being the inventor and the only country that holds the crucial patents of novel materials that fundamentally upgrade industries such as aerospace, automobiles, defense, marine, energy and etc, and also being the only country that has the legal right to produce them for actual application, especially commercially, it’d be just like Taiwan’s become the only country that can provide petroleum. That’s how a currency gets to appreciate for as high as it could while most of the time the market simply can’t say ‘no!’. Appreciation is not a double blade anymore.Regarding education, health care, life expectancy and other aspects of overall development, the HDI of Taiwan was .882 back in 2014, which ranked between Finland and Italy. Crime rates are also very low - Taiwan's been well known amongst tourists and expatriates for being one of the safest countries in the world.According to data[9][9][9][9]from Executive Yuan, the Human Development Index (HDI) of Taiwan was 0.907 in 2017, classified as ‘very high’, ranking 21st globally. The picture shows Dahu Park, located in Taipei City.In Yilan. Not an image of mine.In terms of technology, numerous tier 1 class corporations are from Taiwan, such as TSMC, who is the global leader in the art of nanotechnology of IC manufacturing, and MediaTek, one of the few mobile phone processor designers that can compete along with Qualcomm and actually put Qualcomm at an unsettling edge at times. Let's also not forget HTC, ASUS, Acer, BenQ, Gigabyte, MSI, GIANT, Zinwell and many other famous Taiwanese brands. Taiwan is also known for its optical industry - chances are most of your mobile phones and digital devices that have a camera function are equipped with the plastic lenses from Largan. As for glass lenses, there is FZEROS, one of the very few vendors designing glass lenses for cinema and single lens reflex cameras along with the other brands, of which most are either from Germany or Japan. And if you’re into bikes, you’d certainly know SYM and Kymco for their 550 c.c products. As to automobiles, Luxgen is a relatively new car manufacturer, yet its cars have earned a nice market share with their turbo engines and high-tech equipment such as the eagle-view system. New cars powered by Luxgen’s turbo GDI (Gasoline Direct Injection) engines have been reported to hit the market in the near future while models powered by NA (Naturally Aspired) engines will be arriving at the market earlier - in the third or fourth quarter in 2017. Notice, I don’t own most of the images that I’ve used here.Kymco AK550 at an exhibition in Cologne, Germany, 2016.Kymco AK550 in motion.Kymco Xciting 400i ABS.Kymco CV2.Kymco SuperNEX, at EICMA (Milan Motorcycle Shows), November 2018.SYM T2, this isn’t a 550 c.c model.SYM T3.Two pictures of the SYM SB300 CR ABS. SYM and SANYANG (as printed on the engine) are the same company.PGO V2, a product of PGO, which is a main Taiwanese motorcycle brand along with Kymco and SYM. The PGO V2 is equipped with a PGO in-house engine, displacing 1,600 c.c.Luxgen U6 Turbo Eco Hyper, 1.8 L, equipped with a gasoline engine independently developed by Luxgen, horsepower 170 ps max, torque 26.1 kgm max. The same model released to the Chinese market is slightly different in that it’s smaller, equipped with a turbocharged French engine that is lower both in horsepower and torque. For whatever reason, since mid 2015, Luxgen’s stopped allowing its agent in China to sell any of its newer models equipped with a Luxgen engine, and this has been the case for the U6 Turbo Eco Hyper and U6 GT (picture below).Luxgen U6 GT, 1.8 L, equipped with the same Luxgen engine as U6 Turbo Eco Hyper’s, but having undergone improvement by Luxgen itself and Tomei (a Japanese company specializing in car engine modifications), horsepower 202 ps max, torque 32.6 kgm max. It will enter the market in November, 2017. Similar models (as in displacement and prices) of other brands, such as Honda CR-V, 1.8 L, horsepower 143 ps max, torque 17.5 kgm max, and TOYOTA RAV-4, 2.0 L, horsepower 146 ps max. The Chinese version of U6 GT uses a turbocharged 1.6 L French engine, maximum horsepower below 170 ps.Luxgen U6 GT220, 1.8 L, equipped with a more refined version of U6 GT’s engine, horsepower 222 ps max, torque 33.6 kgm max. It will enter the market in November, 2017, too. But it won’t be released to the Chinese market.A turbocharger is a device that increases the horsepower of an engine and is widely used in automobiles. How much a turbocharger can increase the horsepower of an engine is greatly dependent on how hot the heat that the turbocharger can endure. Most turbochargers that can take in exhausted gas of the engine at higher than 600°C shall easily increase the horsepower by at least 30% and at maximum 100%. As of now, the most heat-resistant turbocharger for automobile engines can sustain 800°C, which I believe is either German or Japanese technology for supercars, F1 racing cars and armoured vehicles (such as main battle tanks), yet now thanks to a new type of alloys named ‘HEA’, standing for ‘High-Entropy Alloys’ (or ‘HESA’ for its superalloy forms), introduced by Taiwanese scientists, the Taiwanese automobile industry is developing turbochargers that are expected to be able to sustain 950°C and far beyond (> 1,000°C).Luxgen’s cars don’t just come with powerful engines, but are also equipped with quite a few built-in useful high-tech features, such as the On-road AR View system (first picture) and HUD (second picture).Like almost every other automobile manufacturer, Luxgen has new products every year. While certainly we can look forward to seeing new cars from Luxgen later this year (2018), there’s a bigger plan for next year - Luxgen’s going to release its first more luxury model: a 2.0T automobile equipped with a Luxgen engine exporting 350 horsepower (picture below), to compete with high-class cars from other brands such as the BMW X4. The picture here was a concept released a few years ago and hence not the final product.The said engine developed by Luxgen for the brand’s new cars originally planned to launch in 2019. Luxgen has officially announced it in September 2018, but said actual production might be postponed to 2020, and the power of the engine would be slightly adjusted, but will still be well within 310-360 range of horsepower. Luxgen is a brand that is only 9 years old and has mostly only developed family cars thus far, but since it has specifically had partnership with companies such as Cosworth, an English firm founded in 1958, specialising in and only in development of F1 racing cars, rumour has it using Taiwan's advanced materials technology as an innate advantage, by acquiring experiences from partnering with companies that are more sophisticated in automobile development as they have longer history in the industry, Luxgen’s long-term plan is to ultimately see itself in the future a brand of supercars. You've got to admit Luxgen really grows so fast technologically.Luxgen URX, one of Luxgen’s new cars that will be launched this year (2019). Luxgen is a fairly new brand, but its cars are not cheap. Apparently, as Taiwan’s biggest domestic automobile manufacturer, Luxgen has adopted a strategy very different from that adopted by automobile manufacturers in other Asian countries – Japanese cars, Chinese cars and Korean cars, they all start from low prices when they are/were beginners in the automobile industry. On the contrary, Luxgen has skipped the low-end/mid-low-end markets since the beginning.The French media reported the URX would be the first Luxgen product to enter the European car market, and the premier country to launch would be France. This isn’t officially confirmed yet by the company, but if it’s true, it would be an opportunity for Luxgen considering this brand is young and not positioned as a budget vendor.Luxgen S3 EV+, a battery electric vehicle. Its propulsion system generates 150 kw of power, equaling 204 ps of horsepower, taking 7.8 seconds to reach 100 km per hour of speed from zero. It has 220 km of cruising range, and requires only 40 mins to charge to reach 80% full of the battery in rapid charging mode. In regular charging mode, a 6-hour charge is sufficient to reach 100% full of the battery. The S3 EV+ is Luxgen’s first car that completely and only relies on electricity.Luxgen U5 EV+, another battery electric vehicle of Luxgen’s, cruising range 360 km – 400 km (depending on the settings), and it takes only 50 mins to reach 80% full of the battery in rapid charging mode. It will be launched in 2019.Despite quite a few automobile manufacturers such as Honda and Hyundai having been investing in battery cars that rely on fuel batteries due to fuel batteries owning innate advantage over lithium batteries, leading to fuel battery cars easily having far longer cruising ranges than those equipped with lithium batteries, Luxgen shares very similar views with Tesla, both of which believe lithium battery cars are the way to go as fuel batteries are much more expensive and overall far less efficient for hydrogen acquisition not only consumes a considerable amount of energy, but is also inconvenient. All of Luxgen’s battery vehicles have been equipped with lithium batteries. Rumour has it that battery automobiles from Luxgen released in the near future will make use of SEI®, nano technology developed by ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute), one of the most direct outcomes being the cruising range gets doubled (300 km → 600 km), outperforming fuel battery cars.Gogoro, a Taiwanese brand of battery electric scooters.The RAC RACE-700, a bus that solely runs on electricity, developed by RAC (a Taiwanese company). The bus has 350 km of cruising range when it’s unloaded. When running at its maximum allowable weight of load (about 2,300 kg), with the air-conditioning on throughout the journey, the cruising range is still over 215 km, more than enough to meet the commercial requirement (150 – 180 km). Also, it only takes 2 hours to get the battery fully charged in rapid charging mode. As a result, you can see them busy transporting people in Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, Nantou and Pingtung. It’s also been exported to other countries since 2012, the first electric bus sold as an entire unit (instead of just parts or components) on global markets.ARTC’s autonomous systems, developed based on a Luxgen U6 Turbo Eco Hyper. ARTC’s autonomous technology is currently at Level 4, meaning it’s more than enough to meet commercial requirements in terms of safety and reliability, and the dev team plans to build Taiwan’s first autonomous bus in 2 years.Luxgen concept car. It features AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ARTC’s Level 4 Autonomous Systems, and is said to join the market in the future. The autonomous system can be divided into 6 levels (from Level Zero to Level 5) based on the autonomous capability according to SAE J3016 Standards. A Level 4 autonomous car can drive itself in almost all situations while maintaining safety and reliability, only one step away from Level 5, which indicates in no situation will the autonomous car need human control to assure security. The majority of commercial autonomous automobiles are at Level 3.So, well, as of September, 2018, it looks like Luxgen’s acquired autonomous technology developed by Acer (yeah, you heard me right) before teaming up with the ARTC. This is Luxgen’s first announced autonomous vehicle, Level 4. The base model is the Luxgen S3 EV+.Studio X-Gene is a Taiwanese company specialising in automobile design, which also includes the engineering. The automobile in the picture above is one of their works, at Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition 2012.Credit of this picture goes to Nikkei Asian Review, which reported Studio X-Gene has teamed up with Acer to develop a brand of battery electric automobiles, whose logo is designed as an ‘X’. The lady in the picture is the founder of Studio X-Gene, and the man behind is her husband. This car here is named ‘Avant GT’, a first-generation electric car of their brand.A Studio X-Gene product at Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition 2011.This futuristic-looking car is a product of Thunder Power, a Taiwan-based car manufacturer even newer than Luxgen. This picture was taken at a car exhibition in Frankfurt, 2015. It’s been reported that this car will hit the market in 2019.GIANT bicycle, I think it’s quite a famous brand.Largan is internationally the largest supplier of lens and camera module technology for digital devices, especially in the high-end field where Largan takes 75% of the global markets. Iphones in particular are known to be equipped with Largan’s lenses and camera modules.FZEROS 25mm M43 Cinema Lens.An Olympus camera equipped with an FZEROS cinema lens.A BenQ 4K Ultra HD HDR television. BenQ is the leading Taiwanese brand specializing in 3C products.BenQ 1080p DLP Home Theatre Projector. The same brand also offers 4K models, just a lot more expensive though.BenQ used to be a major brand of digital cameras, but has quit the market a few years ago.Vivitek is a major Taiwanese brand of consumer electronics, best known for its home cinema projectors. The model in the left picture is the HK2288, offering Ultra HD 4K resolution, 2,000 ANSI lumens and an extremely high contrast ratio (50,000:1), giving you extraordinary visual experience no matter you want to use it for movies, gaming, FIFA or NBA. The picture on the right is from the website of Vivitek.If home cinema projectors can’t satisfy you, Vivitek also has laser projectors for engineering applications. The Vivitek DU9800Z (left) is a laser projector very often used for events like the opening ceremony of a sport game held in the evening to create live 3D effect. You can also use it for home cinema purpose, and better, using more than one DU9800Z (the right picture) to project a dynamic and vivid scenery environment, like the picture below.I know some rich guys really have ‘home cinemas’ very similar to this. This was at the Vivitek booth at InfoComm USA last year (2018), not taken by me.If you’re one of those that have already invested in a scenery home cinema, why not invest just a little more to be granted marvelous acoustic experience? Usher is a major Taiwanese brand of speakers, the speaker set composed of two tall, elegant and refined speakers in the picture here is the Usher BE-10s, you can bring a whole new set of them home for just little bit over 16 grands. I love you if you do. The image here is from a website called ‘Prairie Audio Man Cave’.And don’t forget to include a Johnson (a Taiwanese brand) massager in your home cinema, they’re great, I promise! This particular massager in the picture is the Johnson J6800.Other than BenQ, CHIMEI is another major Taiwanese brand of household 3C products. The two pictures show CHIMEI 4K televisions (size of the one in the second picture is 75”. I have no idea how big the one in the first picture is), featuring quite a few CHIMEI’s top-notch display technology. Credit of the second picture goes to a website called ‘ifans林小旭’.AUO is the second largest supplier of TFT-LCD panels globally and belongs to BenQ. Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are the 3 iconic countries of LCD (liquid-crystal display) technology.InnoLux, along with AUO, is another Taiwanese company specialising in innovation of LCD technology and one of the largest suppliers of such technology internationally. Foxconn is the parent company of InnoLux.SHARP, the inventor of the original LCD technology, is undoubtedly the best and most advanced in the TFT-LCD industry, but owing to its inefficient management and marketing strategies, SHARP gradually developed into a bankrupt, leaving the Japanese government no option but to sell it. There were quite a few international corporations from multiple countries like Taiwan, America, South Korea and even Japan itself that were willing to take over a bankrupt SHARP as SHARP was really technologically top-notch, more advanced than InnoLux, AUO, Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, LG and every other company specialising in LCD products. The bid ended with Taiwan acquiring SHARP - now SHARP belongs to Foxconn and is profitable again.A Foxconn branch in the US.Darwin is a company specialising in materials technology of semiconductor, and is thus far (2018) one of the only three companies in the world that has developed mature FMM (Fine Metal Masks) technology. FMMs are the most crucial materials and process (deposition) required in OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) development, especially for OLED TV panels, which have much larger dimensions than those of OLED panels for handsets. Other than Darwin, the other two companies that supply FMMs to OLED panel manufacturers are DNP (Japan) and TOPPAN (Japan).Not just a major supplier of LCD technology internationally, InnoLux is also the leading company in development and innovation of AM Mini LED technology. AM Mini LED offers superior visual quality to that of OLED yet with a much lower price, and hence is believed to be able to boot OLED out of the market in the near future, especially for products that have large displays such as televisions.SAMPO, TECO, TATUNG, SANLUX and KOLIN are five of the major Taiwan-based brands of household appliances, but they mostly focus on domestic markets (I don’t think they even care about foreign markets at all). If you’re Taiwanese, you almost certainly grew up with their products. The picture is from SAMPO’s website, and hence that’s a SAMPO refrigerator.A SAMPO bake oven. This isn’t advertisement, but the model is KZ-SD35W, you know … just if you’re curious (hehehe).HTC VIVE, something you crave if you're a gamer.HTC VIVE Focus Plus, 615 ppi, the highest in the VR headset market when it gets launched (April 2019), superior to the Oculus Rift (461 ppi), HTC VIVE (448 ppi) and PlayStation VR (386 ppi).7 Miracles, the first VR movie in human history, produced by Panogramma and Film Production Consultants, published by VIVE STUDIOS, and has won an award at Raindance Film Festival. This movie is 70 minute long, filmed in 8K definition quality, and features full 360-degree viewing. You can now purchase it in Google Play Store (iOS version will be released in the future) and enjoy it on HTC devices. The future of the movie industry is here. The future of the movie industry is to put the audience in the movie.HTC U11, featuring Edge Sense technology, different from anything you’ve seen before.The front of the HTC U11. I believe everyone’s got his/her own preferences for smartphones and there’s nothing wrong with it, but let’s get rid of all the personal ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes’ here - with all the reviews available on the Internet along with all those performance comparison tests (display, speed, camera, audio, speaker, gaming, battery life and etc) among different brands, I think it’s very safe to say that overall and objectively HTC U11 is currently (late 2017) the most superior Android smartphone out there.Time flies, 12 months has passed since the launch of the HTC U11 and I’m updating information in August, 2018: now we have the HTC U12 Plus (picture above). My first smartphone was an HTC One (M8), and that phone was goddamn classic. HTC reached the top in the Android world with its early models of the One series. Ah, I still remember people calling HTC ‘king of Android’, good old days weren’t they? Call me a fanboy, I’ve only owned smartphones from HTC and Apple.Like the U11 series, the U12 series also offers an option of translucence.HTC One M8, released quite a few years ago, various handset critics and reviews entitled HTC ‘king of Android’ for it. This smartphone was a gift from God.HTC Exodus 1, the first smartphone built based on blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is said to be the savior of people who want absolute zero censorship on the Internet and is believed to be able to crush national censors. So as a result, HTC has no plan to put this phone on the Chinese market. Honestly, I think even if a phone like this actually got permission to enter the Chinese market, the Chinese government would simply just use a different way to censor, like forcing users of blockchain phones to register with government-issued IDs. The price tag of HTC Exodus 1 says 950 USD (equivalent to 0.15 BTC/4.78 ETH), as of October 2018.HTC introducing blockchain technology in the smartphone industry is a risky move because developing blockchain phones is expensive, and blockchian tech is too novel a concept that is also too technical for people to even bother trying to understand what the hell it is. However, the market seems to have recognised the value of blockchain phones because the HTC Exodus 1 has sold well. In April, HTC has announced that a second HTC blockchain smartphone will be introduced later this year. The phone will be named ‘Exodus 2’, and will be HTC’s flagship handset for 2019. This picture above was a concept released last year by a website called ‘Science&Knowledge’ for the HTC U12.I don’t know if HTC has any plans of launching foldable smartphones in the near future, but certainly this technology is already available from other major R&D institutes in the country even if HTC itself hasn’t put much emphasis on development of foldable devices. The image above demonstrates foldable OLED screens developed by ITRI years ago. Personally, I don’t think foldable smartphones are going to be mainstream devices any time soon because I believe related technologies won’t mature in 5 years, probably not even in 10 years since this isn’t just about the screen, but also about the whole of the hardware. Foldable communication devices from whichever brands – Apple, Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi – whatever, for a very long time, may not be able to get rid of this clumsy and embarrassing feel that they have. 5 years from now, smartphone manufacturers will still be making the same kind of ‘foldable smartphones’ that is essentially just a very small tablet that you can bend into a big thick brick which just happens to have a tiny screen on it. But, it’s an interesting idea and worth paying attention to observing how the trends will develop.The round piece is an OLED display. The image containing six pictures above demonstrates InnoLux’s cutting-edge technology to turn OLED display into a small, thin, flexible bit like a piece of paper. You can abuse it like how the person does in these pictures, and the display will still function flawlessly. The full video is available here[10][10][10][10].At an exhibition of display technology in 2017, AUO has introduced a foldable OLED screen (picture on the left), what’s unique about it is unlike most other fragile foldable OLED displays the world has seen, AUO’s foldable OLED display is built using the company’s own patented plastics-based materials, and hence very difficult to break. The picture on the right has featured AUO’s advanced display technology to develop OLED screens that are almost bezel-less – the bezel is only as thick as 0.4mm, making the OLED display look like a piece of fine glass. I fetched these two pictures from this YouTube video[11][11][11][11].Using more advanced materials, AUO’s foldable OLED display isn’t just hard to break. It’s also much more durable as it’s able to fold up to a million times, which means even if you fold an AUO OLED screen 200 times a day, it will still be able to work flawlessly for more than 10 years.This is Motorola’s first foldable smartphone, named RAZR V4, ready to ship this year (2019). This smartphone uses AUO’s foldable OLED display as its 6-inch primary screen.AUO’s taken circular display technology to the next level by introducing the world’s first true circle OLED display. A ‘true’ circle is mathematical and geometrical, and in engineering’s terms, it means the display has much slimmer salient corners compared to a circle display that isn’t a ‘true’ circle. True circle displays enable development of products with smoother and more flexible design.It looks like a piece of real paper put in a real sealed bag that is transparent, but actually this entire thing including the sealed bag is a display - it’s a flexible solar powered e-paper developed by AUO.Another Taiwan’s cutting-edge display technology, a transparent OLED display developed by AUO, at a major tech exhibition in 2018. The display has 68% of transparency, the highest ever in the world. You can watch the full video here[12][12][12][12].AUO's 4K display panel for smartphones. A lot of people may feel it's just pointless to have a 4K resolution screen on a phone since you won't actually notice much difference between definition of 2K and 4K for a display panel that small (about 6 inches at most), but when you put the phones in a smartphone VR headset (like the picture below) to watch videos in VR, it's actually going to make a hell lot of difference. 4K resolution on a 5 - 6 inch panel turns out a ppi figure larger than 700 (whereas 2K is usually 450 - 550 ppi at best), making the graphics finally start to look smooth and the definition start to look great in the VR mode, bringing superb immersion. If you're interested in VR entertainment but not much a gamer, you don't need something pricey like the HTC Vive. Instead, an inexpensive yet great smartphone VR headset will be good enough for VR movies/TV series/videos, but you'll also want to have a smartphone that has a 4K panel for more fabulous experience.Photontree is a Taiwanese brand of smartphone VR headsets. The company of Photontree has bought the design from Google, so the body of Photontree is too made of cardboard, but Photontree uses its own patent lenses (pic below), selling for about 35 USD. Unlike lenses in smartphone VR headsets from other brands, Photontree's lenses alone can enhance visual quality without changing the resolution. Photontree doesn't use any chips and electronics as it really is just a pair of lenses plus a piece of cardboard, as a result this simple product may not be ideal for using interactive media like video games, but it's great for watching any types of videos (including 360-degree vids). Photontree can hold smartphones up to 6 inches, watching high-definition VR videos on a 4K 6 inch smartphone in Photontree with a nice pair of headphones is just like having your own mobile IMAX.Photontree’s lenses (left). I obtained the image from Photontree’s website.Linpus, a computer operational system developed by a Taiwanese software company of the same name – LINPUS. Linpus OS is based on Fedora Linux, which is an open-source model, and hence there’s no copyright or license issue. Linpus is mostly used by Acer laptops. Taiwan’s computer expertise is mostly in the hardware sectors, but that’s not saying we don’t have finely profitable software industries.One of Trend Micro’s most famous products – Trend Micro Maximum Security. Trend Micro’s the largest Taiwanese company that specializes in computer security technology of the consumer market, offering products both for households and enterprises.The Gate of Firmament, a PC/PS4/Xbox One video game receiving favourable reviews. It was originally released in 2015 as the last title of Softstar’s ‘Xuan-Yuan Sword’ series. I’m not a gamer myself but you can buy it on Steam. Softstar’s confirmed the next title of the series will be made with Unreal Engine 4, which according to some gamer friends of mine, is exciting news that could almost bring them orgasm.Successor to The Gate of Firmament, currently in development, release date scheduled in 2019, and will be released on PC/PS4/Xbox One. This is an early leak of in-game graphics.Softstar’s one of the largest Taiwanese video game companies (actually, probably the largest), and has had a long history of making video games. The picture here is ‘Tun Town’, an RPG released on PC in 1998, and was a huge success. Now there are Android/ios editions you can buy on your smartphone.A couple of screenshots of ‘Devotion’, a first-person psychological horror video game released very recently (February 2019), developed by Red Candle Games, given a score of 9.8 out of 10 by IGN, with various game critics remarking ‘a match for the Silent Hill series’.Transcend is a major brand of digital products, offering well-built and high-quality hard disks, memory flash cards, multimedia players, GPS systems, dashboard cameras, etc.A Gigabyte GeForce GTX TITAN Black graphics card.This laptop is the MSI GT83 TITAN 8RG. The only thing about it being a laptop is that it looks like a laptop. In fact, this thing is so powerful that I don’t know what it is. Be careful, it can ruin your life. If you’re considering buying your children laptops, don’t give them this. This thing will make them skip breakfasts, lunches, dinners, school, birthday parties, sleep and everything. You give them this, you take away their lives. I don’t own this image.An Acer Aspire E 15 laptop.The Acer Predator 21 X, making the MSI GT83 TITAN 8RG look like a MacBook out of a MacBook in terms of performance.You know what it means when in your spare time you are a PC gamer who when at work is a hard-working employee or employer? It means you should reward yourself with a luxurious computer monitor. The Acer XR341CK is an advanced, curved, 34-inch, UltraWide QHD monitor. I fetched this picture here from a YouTube video titled ‘Acer XR341CK - Perfection in a monitor?’[13][13][13][13].ASUS ZenBook, you aren’t gonna tell me you don’t know this brand.ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X APEX, price tag says 400 bucks, one of the most top-notch ASUS motherboards that can turn your mediocre computer into a beast, or your beast into a NASA-class one; PC MASTER RACE.As you must know, ASUS is also a smartphone maker. I don’t know about other countries, but in Taiwan, ASUS smartphones are usually in the top 3 (market share). In the picture is an ASUS Zenfone 5Z.ASUS is known for its devices that offer the users superb gaming and visual experience. These are ASUS ROG phones, a series different from the ASUS Zenfones.An ASUS Zenwatch 3, using Google Android Wear. I know you want one.ASUS Zenbo, a home robot, probably one of the very first household robots that can move around by itself. It has some very useful functions. For example, if somebody or something opens your window from the outside when that window is supposed to be close, Zenbo's face will turn alert and inform you that it's possible you may have an intruder. You can also remote-control Zenbo to check the house around when you aren't home or when you've got children to take care of.Pepper is a robot designed by SoftBank and built with Foxconn’s technology.The AI and robot industry is currently among the cynosures of Taiwan’s development roadmap for the next 5-10 years, and so a lot of investment has been going into this field. The three pictures above show a robot (apparently, based on Einstein) developed by a team from a research university (NTU) in Taiwan. This robot is specifically designed to mimic human emotions and facial expressions. What do you think *he* saw?Dr Aja Huang (黃士傑), who after obtaining his doctor’s degree in information engineering from NTNU (台師大), has been acquired by Deepmind (a British company specialising in AI development, now belonging to Google) and become a core engineer in the AlphaGo project. He has designed the most part of AlphaGo, and has been regarded pretty much as the sole creator of this extremely advanced AI system, which has repeatedly, and more often than not, defeated the best Go professionals from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and China, the first time that AI has defeated human masterminds overwhelmingly. For a very long time, Deepmind didn’t even allow the media to have any contact with him, but soon after the company figured it’d be inevitable for him to go public as AlphaGo gained more popularity, he had become a public figure, and had been invited for speeches, interviews, even movies (picture below).A documentary film on Dr Huang (the person on the left) and AlphaGo, now available on Netflix. The person on the right is Sedol Lee, a Go professional of 9 dan rank from South Korea. Lee has been one of those that AlphaGo has defeated.Dr Huang and his AlphaGo, along with the poster of the documentary film on Netflix, remind me so much of this very popular Japanese anime ‘Hikaru no Go’ (ヒカルの碁) back when I was a high school student. The biggest difference is that Hikaru Shindo didn’t create Fujiwara Sai while Dr Huang did create AlphaGo.Beseye is a company specialising in home security and AI technologies. One of the company’s most famous products is an award-winning webcam system (picture at the top). The webcams themselves can be put anywhere, on the table, or even attached to the wall or underneath the ceiling. The system utilises AI which learns over time by acquainting itself with the environment under its jurisdiction, therefore it’s much more efficient and precise in detecting anomalies, being able to provide early prevention. In fact this product is so advanced that it’s even been used in industry as it can actualise people counting, hot spot analysis, traffic and queue mapping, etc.TSMC wafer production.TSMC seems to be light-years ahead of its competitors.The 3 nm fab of TSMC’s is set to be located in Tainan, Taiwan, and the construction of the fab will start after (environmental) impact assessment is finished in 2018. This is the first 3 nm fab ever to be built in the world, ahead of Intel and the other non-fabless semiconductor companies.VIA QuadCore E C4650 Processor, released in 2015. VIA is a Taiwanese fabless IC company designing CPUs (Central Processing Units), GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) and other computer chipsets. I’ve got to admit when it comes to computer chipset designing, Taiwan isn’t as competitive as America (and basically only America since other countries are pure garbage compared with Taiwan in this area. What I mean by ‘this area’ is ‘consumer markets of computer chipsets’, a battleground way tougher to survive for computer IC-designing companies than other chipset markets because consumer markets don’t allow core cluster. So while China puts more than 40,000 units of its homemade CPUs clustered to manage to build one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, the homegrown CPUs of China’s have zero competitiveness in consumer markets where core cluster just isn’t possible) because it’s a heavily capital-draining industry where Taiwanese companies simply can’t compete on a dollar-for-dollar basis, along with the fact that when VIA entered CPU markets as a novice, Intel and AMD were already titans, which makes the situation even worse (some even say it’s an awful decision of VIA’s to step in the CPU arena in the first place), yet VIA’s still got something to offer. VIA’s chips aim at getting the most work done with the lowest clock speed and raw power possible, and they’ve been doing it pretty well, so people that may initially expect VIA chips to be inexpensive would usually be surprised to find they’re kinda pricey. If you’re only a casual gamer or aren’t a gamer at all, VIA’s processors should be ideal for you. Take the C4650 as an example, it is powerful enough to smoothly run ‘Ashes of Singularity: Escalation’ in directx12 (as opposed to older directx11). ‘Ashes of Singularity: Escalation’ is a beautiful real-time strategy game, a videogame genre where the CPU plays a much more crucial role than the GPU as demanding calculation is required, especially for a game like ‘Ashes of Singularity: Escalation’ featuring massive battle scale. Some say VIA’s x86 processor technologies are from Intel, and hence VIA has to obtain the license from Intel to continue its business. This is a statement that is only half correct – the x86 processor technologies of VIA are completely VIA’s and have nothing to do with Intel. The only reason VIA’s paying money to acquire license from Intel is because being the first IC-designing company realizing the x86 architectures, the latter’s managed to make x86 processor tech its own property by building one of the best lawyer teams specialising in patent laws, leading to all the other processor vendors – including AMD (whose x86 technologies, just like VIA’s, have nothing to do with Intel) - having to continue their processor business under Intel’s license. Over time, most of these companies have died out due to not being competitive enough. Intel can stop authorising VIA and AMD to have them go out the x86 processor market. It hasn’t done so only because the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) will settle charges of anticompetitive conduct against it. As a result, chances are the license contracts between Intel and VIA/AMD will continuously be renewed once expired because Intel’s forced to. So while Intel prays VIA and AMD will slowly get themselves killed just like all those CPU vendors that were once a part of the market who now are nowhere to be found, VIA and AMD however, have survived. Thus here we are, the only 3 firms designing x86 processors in the world: VIA, AMD and Intel – yes, yes, I know there’s this Zhaoxin, a Shanghai-based company producing x86 chips and crushing all the other PRC’s domestic CPU institutes and vendors that can only do clustered processors (supercomputers, eh), but Zhaoxin’s VIA’s company, founded by VIA and a state-owned investment firm in 2013. All the x86 products of Zhaoxin’s are based on VIA technologies, and can only sell under the brand name of VIA on markets out of China. VIA’s releasing a new processor based on 16 nm technology in 2018, which according to the report, will outperform AMD FX 8370 and rival Intel Core i5-6600.Following the KX-6000 released (tape out) last year, the KX-7000 is planned to tape out this year. If there’s anything good about the PRC’s government, it would be that they have the desire to spend their money and sometimes that benefits Taiwanese companies. VIA’s processors are (now) produced in China, but the IP is all from VIA, whose global headquarter and R&D centre are located in New Taipei City. The joint business between VIA and that state-owned investment Chinese company – which results in a Zhaoxin – has slowly brought VIA’s computer processor business back to life. VIA’s never stopped researching and investing in the computer processor technologies, but the company just isn’t resourceful enough to turn their design into actual (and reasonably priced) products and put up a fight against Intel and AMD in the more demanding gaming market. Zhaoxin conveniently lowers tape out/production costs for VIA and also helps doing marketing. The KX-7000 is said to aim at rivaling the last generation processors from AMD, but the price will be lower. That sounds pretty promising actually. As a consumer, I’d say more competition in the market is always welcome. The image here is a VIA Nano X2 L4050, released like almost a decade ago.VIA S3 Chrome 540 GTX, released in 2009, one of VIA’s GPUs. Just as VIA’s CPUs can’t rival Intel’s and AMD’s, its GPUs aren’t as competitive as NVIDIA’s (though the founder of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), who’s also the current president and CEO of NVIDIA, is Taiwanese) and ATI’s either, but the fact that VIA’s chipset products are still selling quite well for prices that are far from being ‘inexpensive’ or ‘cheap’ should mean something. If you are only a casual gamer (or, not a gamer at all), the 540 GTX should be a nice choice, and if someday you happen to be in a more hardcore gamer mode, the 540 GTX will still be able to run a game like ‘Alice: Madness Returns’ (a very popular horror game, rating a 9 out of 10 in Steam, and it has favourable graphics) smoothly.UMC (United Microelectronics Corporation) is a major semiconductor company internationally, also the first Taiwanese IC company to have independently developed its own x86 architecture for computer processors in the ‘90s (whereas VIA is a different case because VIA acquired basic x86 IP from Cyrix, an American company that went bankrupt). But UMC didn’t survive Intel’s patent war. These are the technology companies that have once developed their own x86 architecture for computer processors but lost to Intel’s patent attorneys: UMC (Taiwan), NEC (Japan), Fujitsu (Japan), OKI (Japan), Siemens (Germany), STM (France & Italy), C&T (America), Intersil (America), IBM (America), IDT (America), TI (America) and Transmeta (America).When people think of Foxconn, what comes to their mind may be a corporation that does only manufacturing, yet in fact Foxconn’s also an innovative company. The picture above shows the sockets of a CPU. They may look insignificant, but are actually quite important in that they determine the amount of electric signals flowing between the motherboard and the CPU. In other words, they play the ultimate role in charge of the communication between the processor and the other chipsets on the board. Foxconn owns more than 1,000 crucial patents of processor sockets, way more than any other companies in the industry, and as a result, processor-designing companies, including Intel, have to be authorised by Foxconn in this regard.Winbond is a major Taiwanese IC company, specialising in Dynamic RAM, Static RAM, microcontrollers, and personal computer ICs. Being one of the very few semiconductor companies that actually have their own patented root technologies of DRAM developed from scratch, it’s also the second largest supplier of serial flash memory chips globally.MTK Helio X30, launched in early 2017, MediaTek’s last X series chipset for smartphones. The result of Antutu Benchmark has suggested the Helio X30 is on the same level with Qualcomm Snapdragon 821. MTK’s products aren’t the best, but considering MediaTek’s just one medium-sized firm and the capital amount of Qualcomm’s is 93 times bigger than that of MediaTek’s to begin with, I’d say fair enough. MediaTek’s chips are more power-saving and don’t heat up as much as those from Qualcomm.MTK’s going to release Helio P80 and P90, which outperform Helio X30 in almost each and every arena (surprising, because the P serious is supposed to be mainstream chips while the X series aims at flagship phones), and are believed to have been huge threats to Qualcomm. The picture here isn’t the actual Helio P80/P90 but an illustration.The M70 will be MTK’s first chip to support 5G, and is expected to ship in the second half of 2019.SERCOMM is one of the largest Taiwanese companies specialising in development of information and communications technology, also a major supplier of internet connection equipment globally. SERCOMM’s products have now extended into the field of 5G.Thunder Tiger is a major Taiwanese brand of drones, the model in the picture here is the CX-180. The thing about Thunder Tiger’s drones is that all their core components and technologies (GPS chips and multi-signal searching/tracking, image transmitting, gyroscopes, etc) are from Taiwan.We’re still very far from the day when the robots that we make will be advanced enough that they can physically put up a fight against themselves and for us to watch them fight like watching UFC games, but actually, we already have this kind of robots - just much smaller, and you have to control them. The Super Anthony is a fighter humanoid robot, a product of a Taiwanese company (LimitlessIQ), and is crazy popular among fighting robot players all over the world because it’s quick, agile and deadly to its opponents. A Super Anthony can be a perfect Christmas gift for children or teenagers interested in robotics and computer languages (Super Anthonies can be coded to learn new moves, and you can also create your own moves for them), but it’s a little bit expensive, about USD 1,100.Two Super Anthonies battling each other. Players are allowed to ‘decorate’ and ‘arm’ their robots with additional accessories (as you can see, the two Super Anthonies in the picture here look different) in the game with permission. This picture is from LimitlessIQ’s website.Brilliant work done by a fighting robot player who is apparently a fan of the Super Anthony.The Super Anthony 2.0, released just last year (2018), a few hundred bucks more expensive than the first generation, but also more powerful.Gigo, a major plastic construction toy brand (founded in 1976) from Taiwan, also the largest domestic brand to split the market with the Danish Lego. Smart Machines and Future Car are two of Gigo’s most popular boxsets.Gigo’s products are very well designed and have high build-quality. They’re safe and fun to play with, very ideal for children to explore imagination and creativity.The SG 100 Cloud Computer, a space computer independently developed by various Taiwanese research institutes. It beats other space computers developed by Germany, France and Japan respectively in both performance and reliability, and has been the only qualified computer sent by NASA to one of the international space stations to run as the station’s brain in April this year (2017). Apart from this, Taiwan’s currently developing the central computer and AI system for NASA’s unmanned space vehicle that is scheduled to land on the moon in search of water in 2020.Ever wonder how products are made? It can be simplified in this way: build raw components first, and then assemble them into larger components, and then integrate these larger components. This applies to most human-made stuff one can see on the planet, be it a car, a smartphone, a computer, a television or a cargo ship. But how is a component made? In most cases, ever since the British industrial revolution took place hundred years ago, they have been made by machines. Such machines are called ‘machine tools’ and come in all shapes and sizes. A machine tool can be a robotic arm that does a welding job or a truck-sized, oven-looking thing that turns a piece of metal into turbine blades used in a turbocharged car engine. That's why the machines tools are also called ‘mother of all machines’ because they are the pillars of the modern human civilisation when it comes to industrial production. Hence, it's very important for a country to have the capability to build machine tools on its own, otherwise the industry of such a country will be heavily dependent on the nations from which it imports machine tools. Whether a nation can build higher-end machine tools or not is a strong indicator reflected by such a nation’s technological development. Most (well actually, all) developing countries, including China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Turkey, despite having solid industrial productivity, are greatly dependent on economies which are the homes of machine tools. In other words, developing countries can produce goods, but cannot produce (or independently produce) equipment that is adopted to produce goods. That's one of the many ways developed nations make money from the developing ones. Taiwan is the fourth largest machine tool exporter in the world[14][14][14][14], and the second largest by per capita[15][15][15][15].Man setting up a Hartford machine tool, a Taiwanese brand. Modern machine tools are controlled by their specific computers. There’re at least thousands of machine tool manufacturers in the world and only 6 of them can build the computer that controls a machine tool. Hartford is one of the capable ones (picture below).The computer Hartford’s developed for its own machine tools.The computer controlling a higher-end machine tool, which doesn't look all that impressive yet requires more brains, capital and time to build than a super computer or a sports car. This thing alone costs more than half the price of an entire higher-end machine tool charged at 200,000 dollars at minimum. It’s expensive because it’s high-tech and the spirit of a higher-end machine tool. Just imagine, how do you make a robotic arm moving at a speed of 2 metres per second stop at exactly the same point every time it's required to stop without even a mismatch of 0.1 μm (the diameter of a hair is about 50 μm)? Think about it.The machine on the left is a computer controlling a 5-axis machine tool. 5-axis machine tools are at the peak of the pyramid of the entire machine tool industry because they’re the most technologically demanding ones to build, exclusively used in industries of aviation, aerospace and ultra-precision optics (satellites, for example), but when compared to the difficulty of building a computer that controls a 5-axis machine tool, manufacturing a 5-axis machine tool is only a piece of cake. Taiwan, Germany, Japan, America and Italy are the only 5 competitive countries exporting computers controlling 5-axis machine tools. 5-axis machine tools and their computers are controlled items because they’re necessary in military industry. For instance, nothing but a 5-axis machine tool can produce the compressor of a turbofan engine – unless you want to do it by hand like how men in the ancient time did. That being said, an aero compressor not built by machines is doomed to failure.Inside a Goodway machine tool. Goodway is a Taiwanese brand of machine tools, but like most machine tool brands in the world, Goodway hasn’t developed its own controllers. Instead, Goodway machine tools are equipped with controllers from either ITRI (工業技術研究院) or controller manufacturers (such as Heidenhain and Fanuc) depending on what coding systems their clients use. A Goodway turning centre (a type of machine tools) using ITRI’s 5-axis controller developed for high-end industries (most typically, aerospace) can easily cost at least USD 400,000. Only a handful of countries have the capability of independently developing high-end machine tools, and Taiwan is one of them.FEELER is the largest Taiwan-based machine tool company, and the third largest globally[16][16][16][16]. This company has the second highest market value internationally in the industry of machine tools developed for the aerospace industry[17][17][17][17]. The U800 (one of the two machine tools in this picture), no bigger than a regular van and equipped with FEELER’s own controller, is worth USD 340,000.AMS (whose parent company is CHMER, founded in Taichung in the 1970s) is the largest Taiwanese company specialising in development of spark machining equipment, a type of machine tools. AMS’s products have been massively used in the aerospace industry for turbine blade machining (picture below).This picture is from this YouTube video[18][18][18][18], demonstrating AMS’s product (model: AD5L AMS) machining cooling holes on turbine blades. Any kind of machining on an aero turbine blade is very difficult because the blade is made of materials that have very high strength, what makes it worse is turbine blade machining requires high precision, as you can see these holes are pretty small, clean-cut and have well-defined edges. It’s a tremendous challenge technologically to apply such high-precision machining to an aero turbine blade without causing damage around the machined areas (such as breakage or tearing/wearing along edges of these holes). Taiwan and Japan have been the only two countries in Asia that can do this.Aero turbine blades may have been the most difficult objects to produce in all manufacturing industries in that they require all top-notch level technologies in materials engineering, casting (as they have to grow in single-crystal formation) and machining (drilling holes and air channels to build a cooling system inside the blades), and Taiwan is one of the very few countries that have all of these capabilities. The blade in the image above is produced by Rolls-Royce.Taiwan’s machine tools are able to produce items that require subnanometre (smaller than nanometre) positional accuracy, which is a cutting-edge technology that only America, Germany and Japan have successfully developed other than Taiwan[19][19][19][19]. The picture above is from a news story on two Taiwanese scientists’ wining an award at Tokyo Nanotech Exhibition & Conference 2016. How much us humans have progressed industrially since the industrial revelation is just incredible.A robotic arm developed by Foxbot, which is Foxconn’s own brand of industrial robots. Foxconn is the world's largest provider of electronics manufacturing services and the fourth largest information technology company by revenue[20][20][20][20]. This Taiwanese company is this big worldwide because it has its own core technologies and develops its own critical equipment, enabling it to fulfill manufacturing requirements for goods from connectors to high-quality consumer luxuries such as iPhones.Terry Gao, founder of Foxconn. (Terry, Terry, I mean seriously, your companies have contributed a lot to Taiwan and I think in whichever countries it’s all very difficult to find a person that doesn’t use a single thing produced by your companies. And seriously, I respect you when you’re a businessman and an engineer, but I can’t trust you when you’re a president. I mean don’t be ridiculous, just stick to business and manufacturing and forget about the whole presidency thing, what do you say?)This is a mask aligner produced by a Taiwanese company manufacturing the critical equipment for the IT industry. A mask aligner is where the IC wafer is built.In the picture above is a camera of a stepper developed by the Taiwanese IC equipment industry. A stepper is the most expensive critical equipment used in the semiconductor industry, and is literally the synonym of cutting-edge ultra-precision optics technology. The camera of a stepper is the most difficult core stepper component to build. I’m not certain how many countries have their own domestic stepper manufacturers (I’m only referring to manufacturers that can independently develop steppers, so SMEE – a PRC’s state-owned company based in Shanghai - is ruled out as it has to import its cameras from Germany), but if I remember correctly, only Taiwan, Japan, America and the Netherlands provide steppers for the semiconductor industry worldwide. Well, however, the American one has been bought by the Dutch one - ASML (picture below).An ASML stepper, the Dutch should be proud of it.ASML Taiwan branch in New Taipei City. Other than the headquarter located in Veldhoven (the Netherlands), the Taiwan branch of ASML is one of the four ASML branches (two of the other three are in America, located in California and Illinois respectively. The other one is in Shanghai or Beijin) that are in charge of both R&D and manufacturing, just like the headquarter. The other branches and offices in some 13 countries all focus on only one sector. For instance, the Pyoengtaek branch in South Korea is a manufacturing-only location.A stepper at a smaller size built by a Taiwanese IC equipment manufacturer.HMI is a Taiwanese company specialising in front end equipment (FEE) for the semiconductor industry. Developing front end equipment has to meet the highest technological thresholds out of all critical equipment used in the semiconductor industry; front end equipment includes, for example, steppers, etch systems and electrons beam inspection systems. HMI is globally the largest supplier of electrons beam inspection systems and has the highest market value, occupying about 80% of the market, way bigger than its competitors based in America (Applied Materials Inc and KLA-Tenor Corporation) and Japan (Hitachi). In 2016, ASML paid billion USD to buy HMI for the latter’s high technological value, just like what ASML did with the American company Cymer. HMI is still essentially a Taiwanese company as it is in Hsinchu and recruits Taiwanese talents, but it now has a parent company. The image here is an HMI e-beam inspection system.What's more, you may be surprised to find out Taiwan is a powerhouse in terms of military technologies. Taiwan is one of the 6 nations on the planet that can design and build turbofan engines on their own, with the other 5 being the US, UK, Russia, France and Japan. What makes building turbofan engines so technically demanding is the heat that the engine generates when operating. In order to build functioning turbofan engines, a country has to be able to produce alloy materials that can remain strong and resistant to deformation along with oxygenic corrosion under high pressure, high centrifugal force, and a temperature of higher than 1,000 °C. Alloys of the kind are called ‘superalloys’, regarded as strategic materials and how they are made are technologies kept classified from country to country. Metals that are non-superalloys either melt before the heat reaches 800 °C or become incredibly weak and soft after 900 °C no matter how high their melting points may be. This is why China still has to import turbofan engines from Russia despite its having built quite a few fighter jets for some 10 - 15 years already, because it is not within China’s industrial capacity to produce superalloys and thus leads to failed attempts to build functioning homemade turbofan engines. Superalloys for aviation are mainly used to build the turbine blades in the rotating high-pressure turbine of the engine, and these blades are the sole reason why turbofan engines are way more difficult to build than any other kinds of engines humans have invented - including rocket engines that are powerful enough to send space shuttles. There isn't any blade in a rocket engine, as a rocket engine is basically just a powerful nozzle producing thrust, and thus materials ideal for building a rocket engine don't have to endure a crazy centrifugal force or any other major forces; instead, all they have to do is to be able to survive a high temperature for roughly only 15 minutes because rocket engines are only for single use; their missions are finely completed as long as the rocket propelled by the engine can send the space shuttle high enough to escape gravity in 15 minutes after launch, and then the rocket along with its engine will be separated from the shuttle, falling into the sea, becoming complete waste (it can remain partially reusable if it’s an RLS (Reusable Launch System), but will still need rebuilding if intended to go for a second run; so reusable or not, the very nature of rocket engines is still ‘single use’ because partial or complete reconstruction of the engine is inevitable after a launch mission). As a result, any materials that won't melt for at least 15 minutes under a high temperature can do the job; it doesn't have to be superalloys. On the contrary, it would be purely ridiculous if a turbofan engine dies in about 15 minutes after startup. A functioning turbofan engine, unless FOD (Foreign Object Damage; such as a flying bird that gets sucked into the engine and causes internal damage) occurs, should be able to survive a high temperature without any need of repair for at least 10 years, not 15 minutes. Aside from rocket engines, it’s worth mentioning that a lot of people can’t distinguish between turbofan engines and turbojet engines, both of which belong to the jet engine family. Turbojet engines, similar to rocket engines, are only for single use; those of them that aren’t for single use have very short lifespan, which isn’t too much different from being ‘single use’ from the perspectives of aviation and military industry. Also, turbojet engines consume significantly way more fuel than turbofan engines. Although turbojet engines were the main propelling systems adopted by aircraft in the WWII era, they have been completely displaced by turbofan engines ever since technologies of turbofan engines became mature. Turbojet engines are low technology compared with turbofan ones. Plenty of countries that can build turbojet engines, aren’t capable of building turbofan engines, while there isn’t one single nation that has the capability to build turbofan engines, not being able to build turbojet ones. Turbofan engines are simply technologically a whole lot more demanding to develop for they require top-notch alloy materials to reach long lifespan. This is where superalloys come into play. Currently, the species of superalloys for turbofan engines have had 6 generations. The newer the generation, the higher the temperature that can be sustained. The higher the temperature, the larger the thrust, also the longer the engine can hold before a necessarily overhaul maintenance. The first generation of superalloys, developed in America, has a maximum durable temperature of 975 °C. The second generation is at 1,000 °C. A maximum durable temperature of 1,050 °C marks the third generation. The fourth generation can sustain 1,080 °C. The fifth generation is able to handle 1,100 °C. Finally, the last generation - sixth, being the most superior heat-resistant alloy us humans have made thus far, is capable of taking a maximum temperature of 1,150 °C. Now, a new superalloy, ‘HESA’ (High-Entropy Superalloy), has been introduced, named and designed by a group of Taiwanese scientists. HESA is expected to exceed the sixth superalloy generation. The improvement of the maximum durable temperature from generation to generation may seem too small to be significant, but in fact the overall performance and lifespan of the turbofan engine can progress significantly even with a mere 25 °C elevation. In the meantime, many more applications of HESA are being studied, such as its potential to build a technologically newer generation of nuclear reactors - more efficient, powerful and safer. In addition to metallurgy, Taiwan’s advanced IT industry has also ended up successful in independently developing the airborne AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar, something just like the turbofan engine that only a small number of countries (US, UK, Russia, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Israel, Japan and Taiwan, the whole list as of late 2016) are capable of building. The airborne AESA radar is amongst the requirements for the 5th gen jet fighter. The Chinese so-called ‘5th gen fighter jet’ J-20 has no AESA radar as the J-20 has never been proven to actually have any AESA systems; instead it uses what we can confirm China has - the PESA (Passive Electronically Scan Array) radar, which unlike the AESA radar, whose subtle, multi-directional electric signals blend in the environment perfectly, is a huge give-away radiating unnaturally strong, one-directional electric signals that help enemy radar systems and fighter jets locate it. One of the advantages that a fifth gen fighter jet has over a fourth gen fighter jet when battling one-on-one lies in the fact that the former uses an AESA radar system while the latter adopts whatever radar that isn't of the AESA system, resulting in the former’s being able to locate the latter with ease while the latter could neither locate the former nor be warned by its own radar system that it's been locked by the former already. Hence, the airborne AESA radar system is very crucial as it not only outperforms any other kind of radar systems, but it also is one of the main contributions to stealth. No AESA radar, no stealth. South Korea is developing 5th gen jet fighters and planning to directly employ engines from General Electric, but has kinda halted the project after the US rejected offering any help with the AESA technology. Now the Koreans are working with the French in the hope of not having to severely postpone the scheme [Update: in July 2017, Korea's made public that it has successfully developed the AESA radar, with the technological assistance of Israel and France]. In Taiwan, 5th gen jet fighters are scheduled to develop from 2018 - 2028. The NCSIST (National Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology) is working on new turbofan engines at a much larger size than the current ones (F125 Turbofan Engine), while both stealth and AESA technologies are already available domestically.A turbine blade made of the Inconel Alloy 718, an advanced superalloy (not sure about which generation it is) that is widely used to build the turbine blades in GE (General Electric) turbofan engines. Aero turbine blades require surgically precise casting and machining technology as you can see there’re a couple of rows of small cooling holes on the surface of the blade, along with a curved air channel beautifully put in the blade (picture C). All of these would not be possible without advanced casting and machining technologies because regular casting/machining doesn’t allow such detailed design. The material itself, Inconel Alloy 718, is even more technologically demanding than the casting. Such a small and thin turbine blade (not bigger than an iPhone 6) made with cutting-edge casting and material technologies, costs more than 10,000 dollars. Three of them can buy you a Benz car.Where the red arrow points at is the turbine section of a turbofan engine, and the blades are coloured blue.Dr Jin-Wei Yeh (葉均蔚), ‘Father of HESA’, who is the man introducing HESA and HEA (the non-superalloy forms of HESA) to the world. Dr Jin-Wei Yeh is a professor at National Tsing Hua University. According to the news where Dr Yeh was inquired by journalists about the applications of HEA/HESA, to which he replied ‘for example, turbine blades and components [used in turbofan engines] having a maximum durable temperature of heat higher than 1,150 °C, which will in return improve the efficiency of the engine by 4%’ (the original text in Mandarin: 例如可耐攝氏1150度C以上、效率再提升4％噴射引擎葉片及零件)[21][21][21][21], we can deduce the exact maximum durable temperature of turbine blades made of HEA/HESA. To increase the thermal efficiency of the turbine of a turbofan engine by 1%, the maximum durable temperature of the turbine blades has to increase by 40 °C. Hence, the maximum durable temperature of HEA/HESA turbine blades is about 1,310 °C, which is 160 °C higher than the sixth gen single-crystal superalloy’s. Taiwan's in the world-leading position in HEA/HESA research.This picture is fetched from the website of NIMS (National Institute for Materials Science), a Japanese organisation located in Tsukuba, Japan. NIMS aims at researching and developing materials that are resistant to heat, along with other features such as high resistance both to forces and corrosion. It is the institute where the fifth and sixth generation of superalloys were born. Since Dr Jin-Wei Yeh (right) introduced HESA, NIMS has been working with him and his team, aiming at developing high-entropy superalloys that exceed the current sixth gen nickel-based single-crystal superalloy (高温用高エントロピー合金の開発). In this picture, the second man from the left, Dr Hideyuki Murakami(村上秀之), represented NIMS’ Advanced High Temperature Materials Division (先進高温材料ユニットは). This picture was shot at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan.Dr Yeh’s latest publication, titled ‘Breakthrough Applications of High-Entropy Materials’[22][22][22][22], included in Journal of Materials Research (JMR) released in October 2018, a prestigious academic journal published by Cambridge University Press, has indicated that it is probable that temperature capability of HESA turbine blades can achieve 1,400 °C based on current theories, nearly 100 °C higher than (my) original speculation at 1,310 °C.The Japanese XF9-1 turbofan engine, currently under development. It uses turbine blades made of the sixth generation nickel-based single-crystal superalloy named TMS-238, with a maximum durable temperature at 1,150 °C of heat (translating to about 1,800 °C at the outlet of the combustion chamber). The engine is expected to have 15 tons of maximum thrust, which puts it on about the same level with the engine of the F-22’s (picture below). For the homegrown 5th gen fighter jet, Taiwan’s currently developing turbine blades made of HESA, whose maximum durable temperate of heat is significantly higher than TMS-238’s, and thus the temperate at the outlet of the combustion chamber should be able to climb beyond 1,800 °C. This has made me (a military fan) be eager to know what we can achieve considering our materials are more advanced than those the XF9-1 uses.The F-22 fighter jet, one of the most advanced 5th gen fighter jets on Earth.Turbine blades made of HEA, developed not by Dr Yeh’s team but by another research university (NTU) in Taiwan. These were of the very first HEA turbine blades developed years ago (in the early 2010s, and thus not as advanced as the ones that Dr Yeh's team is currently developing), classified under the same generation as nickel-based single-crystal turbine blades used in turbofan engines such as the CFM56-5 (picture below). Taiwan is one of the only 6 countries (Taiwan, USA, UK, France, Russia, Japan) in the world that have their own patented turbine blade materials technology. Other countries either directly import turbine blades from them or manufacture turbine blades under their licenses.The CFM56-5 turbofan engine.The Airbus 340 is equipped with four CFM56-5.A turbine blade made of the SRR99, a patented nickel-based single-crystal superalloy developed by the UK. Turbine blades made of the SRR99 are used in the RB199 turbofan engine (picture below).The RB199 turbofan engine, employed by the British Tornado GR4 (picture below).The Tornado GR4, one of the most famous in-service combat aircraft, equipped with two RB199.Turbine blade made of the AM3, a nickel-based single-crystal superalloy developed by France, used in the M88 turbofan engine (picture below).The M88 turbofan engine, powering the Dassault Rafale fighter jet (pic below).The Dassault Rafale, France’s pride.Turbine blades made of the ЖС32, Russia’s nickel-based single-crystal superalloy. You can find them in turbofan engines such as the AL-31 (pic below).The AL-31 turbofan engine, adopted by the Su-30 (pic below).The Su-30, one of the finest Russian fighter jets.Turbine section of the EJ200 turbofan engine (pic below). The blades are made of the CMSX-4, a nickel-based single-crystal superalloy developed by America.The EJ200 turbofan engine, powering the Eurofigher Typhoon (pic below).The Eurofighter Typhoon, together with the Dassault Rafale, they’re called ‘the two guardians of Europe’.The F135 turbofan engine, developed by Pratt & Whitney, using turbine blades made of the CMSX-10, an American superalloy. The fighter jet F-35 (pic below) is equipped with the F135.This is the Fat-35 – I mean, the F-35.The XF5–1, a medium-sized turbofan engine, using turbine blades made of the TMS-162, a Japan’s nickel-based single-crystal superalloy. This engine’s thrust-to-weight ratio is as high as 10, which means if it gets resized to be as large as the M88 or EJ200, it will easily produce much larger thrust than they do. The XF5–1 powers the X Shinshin (picture below).The Japanese X Shinshin, not a combat aircraft intended to go in service but as a tech demonstrator before building a real homegrown next-gen fighter jet.HEAs have also been found to have great potential for being used as the structural materials of the fourth generation nuclear reactor. The fourth generation nuclear reactor is still an experimental concept (all the current so-called ‘fourth gen’ nuclear reactors in operation are experimental, and none of them meets the textbook definition of ‘fourth gen’ as the temperature and pressure at the cores of these reactors are too low owing to material problems), and one of the major differences between the fourth gen and the third gen nuclear reactors is the significant increase of heat along with a considerably higher volume of operational radiation, which inflicts way more severe damage on the materials and hence more advanced structural alloys are in demand. There hadn’t been any candidate material for building a true (namely, “non-experimental”) fourth generation nuclear reactor until research from National Tsing Hua University discovered multiple refractory high-entropy alloys were ideal for such desire. Apart from Taiwan’s HEA research for developing fourth generation nuclear reactor structural materials, only America, France and Japan can produce structural materials for the third generation of nuclear reactors although more than 3 countries have sufficient knowledge to design the reactor. China and South Korea being good examples - they can design the third gen reactor, but can’t produce the crucial materials required to build the core.Nuclear fusion has long been the ultimate dream to generate power to the mankind, however it’s yet to be realised owing to manifold obstacles. As of now, the most reliable approach to induce controllable nuclear fusion is to build a Tokamak reactor (the picture above), a structure that looks like a hollowed doughnut, and offer a high-power input of energy to trigger the fusion of the atoms of deuterium and tritium, a manner in which deuterium and tritium atoms will be able to overcome Coulomb’s Law to fuse, resulting in not only a powerful energy output but also heat at a temperature higher than 100,000,000 °C, so hot that no known materials can stand. As a result, scientists have figured out a way to restrain the atoms only to fuse in the very middle area separated by invisible wall of vacuum from the physical walls of the structure (aka ‘First Wall’). One major problem on the way of realising controllable nuclear fusion is there haven’t been any materials suitable enough to build the walls of the reactor because despite being protected by the vacuum layer surrounding the area where the fusion takes place, the heat that the walls have to endure is still higher than 1,000 °C, along with deadly irradiation that results in high-speed neutrons drilling micro-holes in the walls, where alpha particles get trapped and directly lead to the collapse of the materials starting from microstructural level as alpha particles are quite destructively penetrating. Currently, all the experimental reactors of nuclear fusion are made of either ceramics or carborundum – both aren’t ideal as they have their own drawbacks that can’t be ignored. Nevertheless, the birth of HEAs has brought hope for realising electricity generated by nuclear fusion. Research institutes in multiple countries, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have reported positively about HEAs being the candidate materials to build nuclear fusion reactors. In fact, some scientists have argued HEAs can be THE materials of nuclear fusion reactors.What metal materials look like under a microscope. As you can see, on microstructural level, metals are composed of grains, defined by what are called grain boundaries. The high-speed alpha particles generated during nuclear fusion can effortlessly penetrate the boundaries among grains, leading to materials’ breakage along grain boundaries, and then gradually the said materials will collapse, completely die. HEAs are the only known metals that can survive this.The superconductor is a material that possesses the ability to float in the air without any propelling systems when certain temperature is reached. Such a property is called ‘diamagnetism’. While it sounds pretty cool and futuristic, there are a lot of problems when it comes to practical use of the superconductor. The two biggest ones are its cost and the energy it consumes. Superconductors are expensive materials. Also, to reach the state of diamagnetism, the temperature of the material has to be kept far below -200 °C, which requires a tremendous amount of energy (it consumes a lot more energy to keep something at a lower temperature than at a higher temperature. Think of your refrigerator and air conditioner as examples as they consume way more energy than any of your other household appliances) and very unpractical. Apart from the cost and energy consumption issues, it's also very difficult to maintain something at an extremely low temperature to begin with as it'll need constant and infinite supply of liquid nitrogen, which then arises storage problems since it needs specific equipment and settings. As a result, scientists have been studying the so-called ‘high-temperature superconductor’ (HTS), but the temperature the HTS requires to reach diamagnetism is as well below -70 °C. However, HEA/HESA have been discovered to potentially possess diamagnetism at room temperature or higher temperatures, which scientists find intriguing because it means someday we may be able to build the first real UFO or similar floating vehicles in human history. Just as Dr Yeh said, ‘in 10 – 15 years, we’ll have Nobel laureates from the field of HEA/HESA’.The history of human civilisation speaks the history of materials. Contrasting with our cave-dwelling ancestors who knew nothing better than stones and rocks, or residents in the Renaissance era that took glass and refined iron for the world, our knowledge’s progressed greatly to an extent to allow us to develop some of the most advanced crucial materials used in the most high-end fields – such as ceramic matrix composites (aerospace, aviation, energy, military, ultra-precision machining), refractory alloys (energy, ultra-precision machining), magnetocaloric materials (aerospace, aviation, military, medicine and critical medical equipment), and superalloys (aerospace, aviation, energy, military). As of late 2017, multiple types of high-entropy materials have been developed – including HEC (high-entropy ceramics), HERA (high-entropy refractory alloys), HEAMM (high-entropy magnetocaloric materials) and HESA - in an attempt to offer alternative materials in their own relevant fields. Studies thus far have suggested in the future it’s highly possible these high-entropy materials will completely displace their conventional counterparts in the same fields judging by the fact they’ve had incredibly high performance and exhibited plenty favourable properties despite being so young.This is the best way I can think of to help people understand the significance of Dr Yeh’s achievement. In this picture, you see an iceberg. While a small part of the iceberg is on the surface, a much larger part of it is underneath. Now imagine the iceberg as a whole represents the space of materials science (just metaphorically all right). Well then, the small part on the surface represents ‘non-high-entropy materials’ whilst ‘high-entropy materials’ is the large part underwater. Before Dr Yeh introduced to the world high-entropy materials, what materials scientists’d been studying was just that small part (and all the materials we’ve been using - steel, semiconductors, superalloys, titanium alloys, glass, gold, ceramics, anything - are all from that small part). Dr Yeh’s achievement means a fundamental theory of materials science is flawed, which unfortunately no other materials scientist ever doubted. This is also a possible reason that some materials existing in theory have yet to be found in real-life - because scientists have been looking into the wrong place! Such as room-temperature superconductors, all mathematical and physics models indicate they exist, but scientists’ve been studying superconductors for more than a century to find no sign of their existence. Hey, it can be that they’re underwater! It’s highly possible room-temperature superconductors are high-entropy materials. Now many major countries, including America, Japan, Germany, France, Britain and even China, have started researching high-entropy materials, and a lot of prestigious institutes are involved, like Oak Ridge National Laboratory, NASA, Air Force Research Laboratory (USA), NIMS, German Engineering Materials Science Centre, etc. High-entropy materials are notoriously difficult to make, though. Dr Yeh’s developed methods to produce high-entropy materials of both good quality and quantity (development of the methods took him 10 years due to great difficulty), and I believe he and his team have patented the methods. This is partially why Taiwan has an edge on other countries in this field. As far as I know, thus far Taiwan’s been the only country that has been able to actually develop products with high-entropy materials. Other countries are still in the laboratory stage owing to quality/quantity problems.Scientists say high-entropy materials are novel materials of the 21st century. What they really mean is high-entropy materials are materials of the future. So, my human fellows, welcome to the future. I sincerely believe Dr Yeh should enroll in the Nobel Prize competition and compete for the Prize in Chemistry or Physics.These are Nobel laureates that were of nationality of the ROC when they obtained the prizes. From left to right (top): Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (Prize in Literature, obtained in 1938), Chen-Ning Yang (Prize in Physics, obtained in 1957), Tsung-Dao Lee (Prize in Physics, obtained in 1957). From left to right (bottom): Chao-Chung Ting (Prize in Physics, obtained in 1976), Yuan-Tseh Lee (Prize in Chemistry, obtained in 1986). The bottom right one is Jin-Wei Yeh, the guy we’ve been talking about. Well, he isn’t a Nobel laureate yet but I really hope to see him end up one.On campus of National Tsing Hua University, where Research Centre of High-Entropy Materials locates, dedicated to develop high-entropy materials, including room-temperature superconductors. Taiwan is small, but can still have an opportunity to make one giant leap for mankind.The WEF (World Economic Forum) has overhauled their approaches to evaluate competitiveness of nations, and in their The Global Competitiveness Report 2018[23][23][23][23], on the assessment of ‘innovation capability’, where most countries have performed poorly or not done as well as they do on the other assessments in the same report, Taiwan, America, Germany and Switzerland have been the only four countries classified as ‘Super Innovators’, each given a score higher than 80 out of 100 (the global median score is 36. The assessment of ‘innovation capability’ has the lowest global median score among all assessments). I take this as a sign indicating Taiwan innately has a better pool of talents considering Taiwan only spends 3.16% of its GDP in the R&D sectors, lower than Japan (3.29%) and South Korea (4.23%), and though higher than China (2.07%) in percentage terms, the absolute amount of money thrown into R&D is – goes without saying - far lower. According to the WEF, Taiwan’s overall competitiveness has ranked fourth in Asia (including Oceania), only behind Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong.Many people don’t truly understand that science and technology are two different things, and that most of the time the former never automatically translates into the latter. Science is theoretical and abstract, while technology is practical and more material. Between science and technology, there’s a gap. Only by filling the gap will the former be able to translate into the other. What is the fundamental cause that makes a developing country be technologically inferior to a developed country, provided both of them are scientifically on the same level just about equally (the developing country can even produce more scientists and send more students to top universities than the developed one)? The fundamental cause lies in the discrepancy of their ability to fill the ‘gap’. The developed country has a way to fill the gap while the developing one doesn’t, and hence, the developed country can translate its scientific knowledge into actual technology while the developing one has to import. What is ‘the way’ to fill the gap, then? It is materials engineering, the key to translate science that exists on paper into actual stuff. The picture above introduces eight individuals. The countries that they come from represent the eight most technologically advanced states in the world. Most of them developed quickly in materials engineering owing to war. In order to survive or conquer, they had to invent some of the most advanced weapons at the time, and to achieve that, they made great effort to develop materials that could turn concept and ideas into actual weaponry. Now long after WWII, we’re living in a world that is sort-of-reasonably peaceful, yet does this fact even slightly influence their dominance? No. Most of their dominance simply has shifted from ‘military’ to ‘industry’, but never faded away. If you opened up a Skoda engine, which is an automobile brand from Czech Republic, you would learn the design is completely Skoda’s, and that the knowledge is Skoda’s, but chances are the core parts – such as the crankshaft – are made of German materials for German materials are much stronger, being able to tolerate more friction and heat. These materials simply make the engine more reliable and more powerful, yet a great portion of the cost of such a Skoda engine will be due to them. In other words, the German materials directly determine not only the quality of the Skoda engine, but also for how much the engine has to be sold to make up for the cost. Or we can simply put it this way: Germany has a say in Czech’s automobile industry. It isn’t like Skoda didn’t try to invent something equally good to replace German materials. It was just Skoda found out what it invented would simply, at the end of the day, turn out to be either noticeably inferior to its German counterparts or already another German invention patented some 10-20 years ago. This is called ‘patent blockage’, how a country industrialised pre-WWII maintains the upper hand technologically, by patenting as many things as possible, using the chance when countries industrialised post-WWII were still in poverty. This is worldwide phenomenon. China and South Korea have full knowledge to design 3rd gen nuclear reactors, but the crucial materials used to build the core are imported from GE and HITACHI. It really is just as simple as this - materials from countries industrialised pre-WWII, translate science on paper into actual technology. It is the discrepancy of the ability to fill the ‘gap’ between science and technology that makes the fundamental difference between a developed country and a developing one, or between a developed country industrialised pre-WWII and one experiencing industrialisation much later. It is good that Taiwan’s effort put in materials engineering has started to pay off, that Taiwan’s been a game-changer by introducing high-entropy materials. Such materials will be a fundamental breakthrough for current turbine systems as nickel-based superalloys have reached their limit. They’re also revolutionary for any industries requiring parts and components that can work in extreme environments – these will cover most of the aerospace industry, the energy industry, the marine industry, the defense industry, the petrochemical industry, and so on. Restrained by its own size, Taiwan naturally has more limitation in areas that need a lot of capital investment, like, Taiwan is too small a country to be economically capable of building a commercial 4th gen nuclear reactor in any near future (and, nuclear energy’s sorta not welcome here, either, for now at least) – for instance, a fast breeder reactor would easily cost more than 5 billion USD, and it’s only experimental. But by being a patent holder of the crucial materials required to build the cores of such reactors, Taiwan will still put itself at the ultimate top of the food chain. Innovation is not when you make a bendable smartphone. It is when your invention directly decides how mankind will develop their civilisation for the future, just like the Wright brothers with their Wright Flyer 115 years ago.Due to more sophisticated materials technology developed for warfare, countries industrialised pre-WWII are usually much more advanced than those pro-WWII in industries where parts and components have to work in extreme environments. In the image above is the Korean K9 Thunder (sold to Norway), a howitzer powered by an MTU diesel engine. MTU is a German company. Unlike civilian automobiles, armour vehicles require much more horsepower as they’re much heavier, but producing such big power, the engine will generate more heat and forces (like, stronger friction and collision between parts), and therefore the parts have to be made of materials that can survive in such brutal working environment. This is the reason that despite having produced quite some diesel cars already, South Korea still isn’t able to build a military diesel engine as materials used to build parts in civilian diesel engines simply can’t survive in a military one. Utilising high-entropy alloys, Taiwan’s ITRI (工業技術研究院) is developing propelling systems for marine military vehicles – diesel.As you can see in this picture, the core (that thing that looks like a metal rubbish bin) of a modern naval reactor (post-1980) is much smaller than one for a nuclear power plant, which is a bad thing because at such a small size, it wouldn’t be able to produce enough power to propel a military ship. However, America’s figured out a way to overcome this problem by simply allowing the core to have more neutrons colliding with more uranium-235. Yet this is something easy in theory but actually very difficult to do in reality as it would generate much more irradiation than a modern 3rd gen nuclear power plant - density-wise. What materials are you going to use to build the core? They can be easily damaged. It took America a little while to invent materials that are more irradiation-resisting than those used to build the core for a 3rd gen nuclear power plant. I think I’ve mentioned above that Taiwan’s developed high-entropy alloys that can sustain irradiation level of a non-experimental 4th generation nuclear core, which means, theoretically, Taiwan would have a high chance succeeding in developing a naval reactor if Taiwan had the money and the need. Ships powered by naval reactors are usually of blue-water navy, and Taiwan doesn’t need that. Green-water navy will do.The most crucial parts in any turbine systems are the turbine blades as they have to sustain a high temperature, along with a large centrifugal force especially when the rotor reaches around its maximum rotating speed. Thus far, turbine blades are made of nickel-based superalloys for they can maintain high strength even at a high temperature, but nickel-based superalloys have reached their limit in turbine applications. This has something to do with the simple fact that while the most advanced nickel-based material can help elevate the temperature at the outlet of combustion chamber up to 1,800 °C, no nickel-based materials can directly sustain a turbine higher than 1,455 °C because that’s the melting point of nickel. High-entropy superalloys, like nickel-based superalloys, can maintain high strength in a high-temperature environment, yet unlike nickel-based superalloys, so far their possible highest melting points have been reported to be beyond 1,726 °C. High-entropy superalloys should be able to help develop turbofan engines for fighter jets of future generations.Thus far, SiC matrix composites have been the materials that come closest to high-entropy materials in terms of potential for turbine applications. It’s pretty impressive actually, because I remember a few years back CMCs still had brittleness problem and now the industry has overcome it. Current heat capability of SiC matrix composites is at about 1,300 °C, and engineers in the aerospace industry have been working hard on trying to elevate it up to 1,482 °C[24][24][24][24] (which seems to be the limit), while in the meantime, studies have found refractory high-entropy alloys (RHEAs) that remain strong at 1,600 °C, such as this study[25][25][25][25] from Air Force Research Laboratory (USA).Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics (UHTC) are poor at retaining strength against major forces in a high-temperature environment, but they’re the most heat-resisting materials that humans have invented if we simply look at their melting points, and are tough enough to bear a strong drag as long as the temperature is below their melting points. So while you can’t use UHTC to build a turbine blade - which has to endure a large centrifugal force, you can use them to build space shuttles or any space vehicles that just have to penetrate the atmosphere of a planet. Space vehicles designed to penetrate the atmosphere are mainly made of UHTC, whose melting point is about 3,100 °C. That’s good enough to penetrate most planets and the Earth, where atmospheres aren’t thick enough to have the heat accumulating around a penetrating vehicle rise beyond 3,000 °C (in fact, most planets we have discovered have thinner atmospheres than the Earth). Now High-Entropy Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics (High-Entropy UHTC) are under development, with a projection of the melting point to be much higher than 4,000 °C, hopefully to replace hafnium carbide (hfc) as the known most heat-resisting materials. And unlike hfc, High-Entropy UHTC will have much better resistance to oxidation, which is a favourable property because that means we’ll be able to build space vehicles that not only can safely penetrate planets having layered and much thicker atmospheres composed of large portions of oxygen, but can also last long on such planets provided they offer an oxygen-abundant natural environment. Planets like this can be habitable.High temperature isn’t the only enemy of metals. In fact, something completely opposite can also cause great damage to metal materials – low temperature. Metals, when put in an environment colder than -50 °C, they start to become harder, but the strength will reduce. At around -90 °C, metal materials lose pretty much all their strength already, which means they become brittle and can be easily broken or cracked no matter how hard they are, making them completely useless materials. However, high-entropy alloys have something uncommon, that some of them actually obtain more strength as the temperature goes down. There have been high-entropy alloys reported to have good strength even at a temperature as low as -196 °C[26][26][26][26]. That’s not absolute zero but you get the idea – just incredible.As a planet that barely any warmth from the sun can reach, the surface of Saturn at the lowest temperature is about -173 °C. This means high-entropy alloys will be reliable and long-lasting metal materials if someday humans happen to want to build something on Saturn or planets that have similar environments to Saturn’s.Nuclear fusion requires a zero-resistance environment for electrons to move, but thus far, a zero-resistance environment for electrons won’t happen unless the temperature is kept at -273.15 °C – that’s absolute zero (so a part of a fusion reactor is very cold, while the other parts are very hot. Hmm, this reminds me of one of my exes), which can damage the metal materials used to build the cold part. This just adds one more technical problem to overcome for humans’ stone-aged fusion technology. Other than having high resistance to heat and irradiation, one thing about high-entropy alloys for their potential to be used as the structural materials of nuclear fusion reactors is that - just as I’ve mentioned - some of them have been found to gain more strength as the temperature goes down below -50 °C. They don’t simply maintain good strength at low temperature. Instead, they actually become stronger for it.Machine tools are the pillars of manufacturing as most artifacts are produced by them, for instance, in this picture you see a drill and a compressor blade (supposed to be made of titanium. Note, a compressor blade is NOT a turbine blade). The drill is a part of the machine tool, and the blade is made by it, called the ‘target item’. The most important quality about a machine tool is its precision, which directly determines such a machine tool’s value. The precision of a machine tool is basically determined by two things. One is the controller (computer) that controls it. The other is the materials used to build the machine tool itself. But it’s mostly the latter that determines the precision. Take the drill as an example. The drill, working at 2,000 rpm (revolutions per minute), when it’s machining the target item, there’s going to be a lot of heat generated on the surface of the drill and the target item owing to friction between them. This will lead to thermal expansion both of the drill and the target, causing minor distortion, which becomes a precision problem (‘loss of precision’). Precision loss can be only temporary or permanent. So far, cutting fluid (picture below) is used by all machine tool manufacturers to prevent thermal expansion, but this method has a few serious drawbacks. A better and fundamental way to improve precision will be to directly change the materials of the drill. But this is difficult as most metal materials are quite sensitive to thermal change. Yet, high-entropy alloys are found to have much lower coefficients of thermal expansion in comparison with other metals, and hence based on high-entropy alloys, the Taiwanese machine tool industry’s developing machines that will no longer need cutting fluid.This is a German machine tool, but the liquid isn’t beer mixed with blueberries. It’s cutting fluid, and the main function of it is to remove heat remained on the surface of the parts to prevent precision loss due to thermal expansion. One major problem using cutting fluid is that although it’s managed to deactivate thermal expansion, the fluid itself can contaminate the target item. This is a very serious issue for industries that have high demand for material purity and cleanness such as optics and aerospace. Germany (and maybe also Japan) has developed very expensive machine tools that ‘almost’ don’t need such fluid, which means they still do, just only minimum. These machine tools are mainly used in fields requiring ultra-high precision like development of spy satellites and some weaponry. As Taiwan’s developing machine tools that can completely get rid of cutting fluid, using high-entropy alloys, soon we will be taking market from Germany.Other than the machine tool industry, another industry greatly relying on materials to maintain high precision is the semiconductor industry. As you can see, there’s a piece of wafer in the picture above, and apparently it’s not used yet as it looks completely blank like a mirror. When it’s used, it’ll look like the picture below.ICs (integrated circuits) are printed on wafers and give them a colourful appearance. Every square represents a circuit diagram. They look like maps of small towns, don’t you think?To better explain why the semiconductor industry relies on materials to maintain or even achieve higher precision (7 nm, and now TSMC’s going down to 3 nm! Blimey!), let’s look at the picture here. The blue part, or the ‘floor’, is the wafer. The ICs, with their structures and logic, which give them functions, are built (printed/projected) on it, just like a building. We’re talking about nanometre, so everything is very small. Now, heat exists, in the environment, everywhere. When it gets higher, the environment results in a higher temperature. When it gets lower, the environment results in a lower temperature. Heat is always getting higher or lower, which means substances are constantly influenced by environmental temperature. So they expand and shrink due to thermal expansion, all the time, and never stop. Sometimes, the changes in their sizes are significant enough for us to observe (mostly you hear them, like your wardrobe makes sound of cracks shortly after you turn on the air-conditioning. Well, that’s because it shrank). But most of the time, you won’t notice the effect that thermal change imposes upon the substances around you because they’re too insignificant. Yet, for IC manufacturing, we’re talking about nanometre, so any changes in the size of the wafer where the ICs are built will be significant. A 1/10000 °C fluctuation of environmental temperature is more than enough to cause significant change to the size of the wafer, to an extent that it can destroy the ICs built upon it. What’s worse is that thermal change doesn’t just come from the environment. The machines (steppers, mask aligners and etc) that print the ICs on the wafer, or the machines that hold the wafer, generate heat too, and so their own temperatures constantly change as well. These all cause expansion and shrinkage of the wafer. How on earth are you going to build the ICs - something that is structured so complicated and demands the highest possible precision - on a wafer that is constantly doing some nanometric earthquakes and stretches? The wafer is never static. This can cause precision loss, meaning basically the whole ICs on the wafer are ruined, resulting in poor yield rates, which are exactly what have failed Globalfoundries, Intel and all those non-Taiwanese IC manufacturers. Therefore, wafers are usually made of materials insensitive to thermal change, and the higher the precision, the more insensitive to thermal change the wafers will have to be (thermal expansion isn’t the only single factor contributing to poor yield rates, but it’s one of the most significant ones, and basically all these factors – thermal expansion or not – have been directly related to semiconductor manufacturers’ capabilities in materials technology). No one can beat TSMC on this.I think many people probably have heard that due to physical constraint, the highest precision that the semiconductor industry can achieve would be just 3 nm, anything smaller isn’t achievable. There’re many possible theories to this, one of which is thermal expansion of the integrated circuits themselves caused by electron activity in them. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure there has been research that attempts to develop high-entropy semiconductors in light of high-entropy materials’ extreme insensitivity to thermal change.In June 2018, the ECCT (European Chamber of Commerce Taiwan) hosted a Premium Event lunch with guest speaker Dr Morris Chang, Founder of TSMC. The theories on physical constraint regarding nanometre manufacturing of IC were first heard in 2015, and it turned out TSMC has had major breakthrough. At the lunch, Dr Chang said that he was confident that TSMC would successfully produce the next generation of 5 nm microchips by 2020, 3 nm by 2022 or 2023 and 2 nm by 2025[27][27][27][27].The semiconductor industry can be divided into two domains, one being the design sector, the other being the manufacturing sector. America, the country that Intel, AMD and Qualcomm call home, is the sole leading country in the design sector, with Taiwan being a remote second as Taiwan’s VIA (a computer CPU/GPU designer. One of the only three in the whole world) and MediaTek are apparently not in the same league as those from America. In the manufacturing sector, where the design on paper is built into real stuff that you can use, the sole leading country is Taiwan, the only country that has had the technological capability to touch anything smaller than 7 nm process, while other countries still struggle with poor yield rates, a critical problem most likely caused by their lower capability in a fundamental science – materials engineering. The technological gap between TSMC and all the other IC manufacturers from any parts of the globe only becomes more obvious and much bigger as computer technology progresses into smaller process year after year. Even America has surrendered, who’s next?At VLSI Symposium 2019 held in Kyoto, TSMC (left) has introduced its first self-designed computer chip[28][28][28][28] (the picture on the right is the chip’s layout), based on 7 nm process. The chip’s highest clock rate is 4 GHz. We don’t know whether this chip is supposed to be a technological demonstrator to show TSMC has the capabilities of designing high-performance computer chips, or this is a sign that likely suggests it’s possible TSMC may enter the chip-designing business in the future. What we know is this chip is designed for HPC (high performance computing), not for the consumer markets.Taiwan cares a lot about every move of TSMC. In the picture above is ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute), which has maintained close partnership with TSMC since 1987. When TSMC was about to decide where to locate its 3 nm fabs and when everyone was guessing, ITRI commented that TSMC would be much more careful choosing the location out of the whole world for its 3 nm fabs than for, say, 7 nm or 5 nm fabs, because 3 nm was on a completely different level as 3 nm was only a step away from the field of QC (Quantum Computing), the ultimate area of computer technology. ITRI said TSMC would only choose a place that it thought had the most potential for QC development, and stated TSMC might not even use silicon anymore. Instead, TSMC would use different materials in development of QC. Dr Morris Chang was the president of ITRI from 1985 to 1988.Quantum computers probably need 10 more years to get mature, but it’s certain that the quantum computer will be the next stage of mankind’s computer technologies. Taiwan is already one of the leading countries in computer technologies of this generation, so there’s no point not to continue this advantageous position of ours in the next generation. Taiwan’s plan for quantum computers is to introduce mature products/processes in 10 years. TSMC is in.High-entropy alloys have high hardness, and therefore will benefit industries that appreciate such a property. In the image above is a Challenger 2, a British main battle tank employing the 2nd generation of chobham armour. Chobham armour is developed by America and has been the known hardest armour for any battle vehicles – at 714 HV. Various high-entropy alloys that can be used in the defense industry have been reported to have greater hardness. For one, a high-entropy alloy consisting of Fe, Ni, Cr, Mn and Si has its hardness measured at 945 HV.High-entropy alloys are materials born to survive in extreme environment in that they are not only highly resistant to heat and irradiation, but also to corrosion and pressure. The picture here shows the landscape of Venus, whose natural environment can’t be more deadly to any known life as the average temperature is as high as 450 °C, along with 9000 kpa of atmospheric pressure, which is 90 times greater than the Earth’s, combining with acid rain every now and then. The Venera 13, a probe landing on Venus in 1982, managed to maintain operational for roughly 127 minutes, and then died. There have been various light-weighted (and hence ideal as structural materials of aerospace vehicles) high-entropy alloys reported to show potential to survive in such an alien and extreme environment.If we don’t take into consideration the other mechanical properties of high-entropy alloys, instead we simply look at their ability to sustain pressure, then thus far, the reported strongest high-entropy alloy against pressure has been developed by US Forces, at yield strength of 5,900 Mpa. The Seawolf-class submarine (as in the picture here) is made of HY-130, an America-developed metal material highly resistant to pressure, which being at yield strength of 900 Mpa, is capable of surviving 9,000 times that of the Earth’s atmospheric pressure. But HY-130 is too heavy to have applications in aerospace.The German Type 214 is made of HY-100, at yield strength of 690 Mpa. The Germans most likely developed HY-100 themselves, but since Americans are the inventor and patent holder of the HY series materials, Germany still has to pay royalty to America.In the picture above is an experimental fast breeder reactor under construction, and the big metal hollow cylinder in the middle of the pic is its core. Fast breeder reactors are a type of the 4th generation nuclear reactor. Taiwan’s developed high-entropy alloys suitable to be used as the structural materials of the 4th generation nuclear core for their extremely high resistance to irradiation.Earlier this month (April, 2019), it’s been reported that material scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have discovered a tungsten-based high-entropy alloy that has exhibited incredibly high resistance to radiation that the world has never seen before. The research team believes this alloy can be ideal for building the interiors of magnetic fusion reactors. The report has described this high-entropy alloy’s ability to resist radiation as ‘unprecedented’ and said ‘it defies radiation’. You can take a brief look at this study here[29][29][29][29] if you are interested.High-entropy alloys are superconductors. As I’ve said before, superconductors exhibit diamagnetism only when their temperatures are kept far below -100 °C, usually below -200 °C. This is because at such a low temperature, superconductors lose the kinetic energy of everything inside them, and hence electrons will encounter little to no resistance (which is usually caused by kinetic energy) moving through them when they’re dead-cold. Such an extremely low level of electrical resistance triggers diamagnetism to happen. High-entropy alloys have been discovered to maintain low kinetic energy internally even at higher temperatures as long as pressurization is applied to them. A research team from Tokyo Metropolitan University[30][30][30][30] has found the temperatures for their superconductors to activate diamagnetism rise simply owing to addition of layered high-entropy alloys. According to the team, the rise in temperature isn’t much, but significant enough to measure. This is incredible, that simply adding one or two layers of something could directly cause the temperature triggering diamagnetism to rise. As for Taiwan, one thing I’m sure is that there’re research teams studying high-entropy superconductors, and their ultimate goal is to develop room-temperature superconductors – so that we will be able to build flying saucers – and of course - to win a Nobel Prize. Never should we forget what Dr Yeh’s said: ‘in 10 – 15 years, we’ll have Nobel laureates from the field of HEA/HESA’ (original words in Mandarin: 在未來10至15年之內，高熵領域將可望產生諾貝爾獎得主).The red arrow points out a very interesting comment, it has me recall what Dr Yeh said back in June 2 years ago when he was interviewed by journalists: ‘now that we have lighter and more heat-resisting high-entropy alloys and superconductors, we’ll be able to develop aircraft similar to flying saucers someday’ (original words in Mandarin: 有了更輕、耐高溫的高熵合金以及超導材料，有一天我們也能造出類似飛碟的碟型飛行器).High-entropy superconductors have attractive magnetic properties, and are considered candidate materials for development of more advanced magnetic applications. When it comes to magnetic materials, one important quality to look for is the strength of the magnetic fields that the materials are capable of forming. Human technology based on magnetic superconductors relies greatly on the strength of the formed magnetic fields, such as maglev systems and particle accelerators in that they need a powerful magnetic field to reach high speed. The Earth itself is a giant magnet, generating 0.25 - 0.65 G (Gaus) of magnetic field when measured on the ground.A Japan’s maglev system, using magnetic superconductors capable of generating 1 G of magnetic field maximum.The famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator located in Europe, crossing the border between France and Switzerland, producing antimatter by having high-speed particles collide with each other. To accelerate the particles to reach a speed near the speed of light, the LHC uses magnetic superconductors generating 83,300 G of magnetic field maximum, which is one of the reasons that the entire set is underground in case people living in that area start reporting alien phenomenon (‘all my electronic stuff acted weirdly all of a sudden, and the clock even stopped!’) Every time the LHC is initiated and operated. One of Dr Yeh’s graduated students has developed a high-entropy magnetic superconductor that can form 90,000 G of magnetic field. Bear in mind that high-entropy materials are still quite young in history of materials science, so I’m very confident we’ll find something even better as more scientists join this field.One thing you have to understand about metals is that if they’re strong, they are heavy too, and so using the same analogy, it’s not difficult for anyone to realise that if a metal is light-weighted, it is weak. Yet, high-entropy alloys are very alien metal materials as if they were not from the Earth in that while they have higher strength and hardness, they’re much lighter than their non-high-entropy counterparts. This is because of a fundamental mechanical property of high-entropy alloys: very low density. Such a property of high-entropy alloys will benefit greatly any industries that need strong parts and components but can’t tolerate even just a few more pounds added as side effect.Now I’m going to talk about the most important property of high-entropy alloys. Sure, high-entropy alloys may have high strength, high hardness, great resistance to heat and pressure, and can survive in an environment that is dangerously corrosive and has deadly volume of irradiation that can easily destroy any other metals, but none of these will matter if high-entropy alloys are expensive materials. Us humans have never lacked of new materials that exhibit one or even more favourable properties that high-entropy alloys have, yet most of these materials never go into industry from laboratory stage due to one simple reason: high costs. Nobody is going to use a material – no matter how good it is – if at the end of the day the profit shrinks because of using it, or simply because the costs are too high for the budget to support. However, thanks to having very low density, high-entropy alloys are much cheaper than their non-high-entropy counterparts. For instance, a turbine blade made of high-entropy superalloys can easily be 25% - 50% cheaper than one made of nickel-based single-crystal superalloys of the same generation. What does this mean? It means gold (money).High-entropy alloys and high-entropy materials have a wide range of applications, from industries that require parts and components to work in extreme environment, such as aerospace, automobile, defense, energy, to industries that demand high precision, such as machining and semiconductor, and even extend to what people see in daily life, such as culinary appliances, construction and sports. These will all bring economic benefit to Taiwan, the national origin of high-entropy materials.The Babylonians, a once prosperous people that created majestic civilisation, when encountered the Hittites, who used weapons made of iron, a material that the Babylonians didn’t have the knowledge of making as they could only produce bronze ware, an inferior material, the Babylonians resulted in total annihilation.This picture was shot at EVERGREEN (a Taiwanese Airline), but it’s EGAT – a subsidiary of EVERGREEN’s – being responsible for the airplane in the picture. EGAT’s one of the largest companies specializing in aircraft maintenance and modifications in the world. The airplane here is an EGAT-modified Boeing 747, renamed as Boeing 747-400 LCF, also known as ‘Boeing 747 Dreamlifter’, a wide-body cargo aircraft used to transport airplanes. This shows the capability of Taiwan’s aviation engineering industry.An illustration showing how exactly the Dreamlifter does its job, as you can see, a fuselage segment of an airplane – being the ‘cargo’ of the Dreamlifter’s – is stuffed into the Dreamlifter while the Dreamlifter is wide open. The ‘cargo’ here is supposed to be a segment of a Boeing 787.Turbofan engine F125 (aka TFE1042–70), developed by the AIDC (Taiwan) and Honeywell (US) in the ‘80s, with its IPR (Intellectual Property Right) owned by both companies.It would be disrespectful to learn Taiwan’s history of F125 development without introducing this scientist - Dr Wen-Hsing Huang (黃文星). Dr Huang went to America to pursue his studies of materials engineering and obtained his master’s and doctor’s from University of Pittsburgh after graduating from NCKU (成大). He briefly joined NCSIST after going back to Taiwan in the ‘90s, during which he helped the research team successfully develop Taiwan’s first nickel-based single-crystal superalloy[31][31][31][31] that could be used to build turbine blades (picture below) on a par with those in the F125, the core technology that America refused to transfer in development of the engine. He made Taiwan become one of the handful countries in the world - and one of the two in Asia - that could independently develop turbofan engines, which still remains the same today. He was productive and had won many prizes. On May 13, 2017, his body and separated right arm were found lying on the ground near the building of the department of materials engineering by a student who was about to head home from NCKU in the evening[32][32][32][32], the university he had taught at for years. He developed depression in his later years and took his own life that day, jumping to his death.The image above is fetched from NCSIST’s website. It’s a turbine blade made of the nickel-based single-crystal superalloy that Dr Huang and the team under his leadership developed in the ‘90s. These blades have been used in the F125 ever since.Four pictures of the Indigenous Defense Fighter (exhibiting 2 different kinds of painting - airshow and regular). The Indigenous Defense Fighter is commonly known as the IDF, the first 4th gen fighter jet Taiwan’s built cooperating with the US in the ‘80s. Due to its aerodynamic design, the IDF has much lower RCS (the lower the better) compared with most other mainstream 4th gen fighter jets, and plays a very crucial role in the Taiwanese Air force because it’s the only fighter jet we’ve got that can carry air-to-surface cruise missiles (picture below) while neither the F-16 nor Mirage 2000 can as both the US and France wouldn’t sell weapons that are attack-oriented to us. There’s a project to upgrade the IDF by equipping it with homegrown airborne AESA radar, which will redefine the IDF as a 4.5th gen fighter jet much like the F-16V (do notice, different countries have their own numeric naming systems of fighter jet generation. A 4th gen fighter jet in America and Western Europe is called a 3rd gen jet in Russia and China. As for Taiwan, we call the America/Western Europe 4th gen ‘2nd gen’, and the 5th gen ‘3rd gen’. Hence the IDF is a 4th gen fighter jet based on US definition, a 3rd gen fighter jet based on Russia definition, and a 2nd gen one according to us).The homegrown Wan-Chien Air-to-Surface Cruise Missile (there’s a serial code that reads WJI-7E-002 on it), with an operational range of 200 km, mainly aimed at terminating the runways of enemy airports to destruct the enemy’s capability of air force. The Wan-Chien Air-to-Surface Cruise Missile is a kind of cluster munitions, a weapon type that is banned internationally but quite a few countries don’t bother, which includes the US itself. The Wan-Chien Air-to-Surface Cruise Missile cannot be carried by the F-16 or Mirage 2000 because the missile and the vehicle are of two incompatible systems – which means if we wanted to equip the F-16 or Mirage 2000 with this missile, we would have to ask the US and France for F-16’s and Mirage 2000’s source code.The homegrown Tien-Chien II Air-to-Air Missile, with a speed of 4 Mach and an operational range of more than 100 km (enhanced version), carried by the IDF. Together with the Wan-Chien Air-to-Surface Missile, it makes the IDF the only true multi-role fighter jet in the Taiwanese Air Force.The advanced trainer XAT-5, currently in development by the NCSIST and AIDC. The first flight is scheduled in June, 2020. Development of the XAT-5 means a lot to the Taiwanese aerospace industry for it is the first time that Taiwan has completely by itself been in charge of the structural and aerodynamic design of a manned high-performance military aircraft. So far, Taiwan and Japan have been the only 2 countries that can independently develop manned military aircraft (4th generation and after) in Asia. It’s been officially confirmed that the XAT-5 will be able to launch air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles, in other words, not a pure trainer.The M-346 Master, an Italy-designed advanced trainer powered by the Honeywell F-124 turbofan engine. Instead of domestically developing an advanced trainer, Taiwan originally considered buying the M-346 as the M-346 had been the best-sold advanced trainer worldwide and great for its role, and as Taiwan’s one of the two national origins of the F125 turbofan engine, there’d be no logistical difficulties (learning curves) at all for Taiwan to maintain or repair an aircraft powered by the F-124, a technologically downgraded version of the F125. Not only that, Leonardo S.p.A (developer of the M-346) had also done its best to please Taiwan as Leonardo S.p.A agreed all the terms that Taiwan proposed (including locally-manufacturing for the core parts, not just assembly), along with offering a very nice price (almost dirt-cheap) for the M-346 itself, much cheaper than how much the same aircraft was sold for to Poland, Singapore and Israel. This was because Leonardo S.p.A was well aware that Taiwan could just independently develop an advanced trainer itself and hence for Taiwan the M-346 wasn’t necessarily an option if not cheap and the terms not being ‘customer-friendly’ enough. Anyway, at the end of the day, quite unfortunately for Leonardo S.p.A that despite its having been pleasing this potential buyer in every way possible, Taiwan still decided to domestically develop what it needed - so there it is, the XAT-5. In comparison with the M-346, the XAT-5 has clearly more characteristics of a fighter jet in that the XAT-5 is longer, thinner, slimmer, sharper and more pointy like a spear while the M-346 is shorter, thicker, fatter and rounder, which already makes a difference between them - the XAT-5 is supersonic while the M-346 is not.As Taiwan’s very advanced in materials technology, the XAT-5 has been officially confirmed to massively employ the newest generation of AIDC’s composite materials, which is the main reason that despite the XAT-5, like most trainers, will not be equipped with afterburners, it can still obtain a velocity beyond 1 Mach at its top speed in that AIDC’s composite materials make the XAT-5 very light-weighted. Contrasting with the XAT-5, the M-346 can only reach 0.85 Mach at its top speed. Do notice, top speed isn’t cruise speed because no aircraft cruise at top speed. The picture above isn’t from AIDC.The advanced trainer AT-3 MAX, one of the two design (the other being the XAT-5) proposed by the NCSIST and AIDC for Taiwan’s next-gen homegrown advanced trainer. As you can see, the AT-3 MAX appears more like a typical trainer than does the XAT-5 in that like the M-346, the AT-3 MAX is short, thick, fat and round. The competition among the AT-3 MAX, XAT-5 and M-346 ended with the ROC Air Force favouring the XAT-5.September 23, 2019, the first fresh-off-the-production-line XAT-5 was unveiled. First flight scheduled for June 2020.Turbofan engine ‘Kun-Peng’, developed by the NCSIST in the 90′s, used by cruise missiles and the UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). Turbofan engines for cruise missiles and the UAVs are metallurgically more difficult to build than the ones for fighter jets because the former generates a higher temperature due to a much higher compression ratio caused by the engine’s smaller size. Taiwan’s one of the two Asian nations (the other being Japan) that are advanced enough in materials science to be able to domestically develop turbofan engines.Because most countries don’t formally have a diplomatic relation with Taiwan, I mean - well, with the ROC, which means Taiwan, I mean - well, the ROC, isn’t recognised by most states as a state, Taiwan’s never going to sell arms except for individual weapons downgraded to be civilian versions (and renamed, for instance, the T91 Assault Rifle, picture below). But there’re still a couple of countries that are interested in Taiwan’s defense technology. One example is Turkey. Turkey was willing to pay a large sum of money for Taiwan to transfer technology of turbofan engines.The T91 Assault Rifle. It’s been sold to America but downgraded to fit civilian use and renamed as ‘Wolf A1’. If you’re in America and want a nice rifle, check it out - but do make sure the gun barrel is made in Taiwan because there’re YouTube reviews that said those made in America for this gun are crap.What’s in the picture above is the homegrown thrust vectoring nozzle developed by the NCSIST. It has 60° of vertical angle range, 30° of horizontal angle range, and the working speed is 45° per second. ‘What’s a thrust vectoring nozzle’ you may ask. Well it’s a nozzle installed at the end of the engine of a missile or a manned aircraft. ‘And what’s so special about it’ you may wonder. Well it’s special because it can emit the thrust at different angles, and hence the VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) or STOL (Short Take-Off and Landing) can be implemented. The VTOL or STOL is one of the requirements of the fifth gen fighter jet, along with the AESA radar, radar wave-absorbing materials and low RCS aerodynamic structure. The thrust vectoring nozzle requires very advanced material technology as the nozzle has to tolerate heat even higher than that in the combustion chamber of the engine. Again, there’re only two countries that have successfully developed this technology in Asia - Taiwan and Japan.This picture is fetched from NCSIST’s website. It’s a thin, square plate with greyish coating. The coating is the cynosure here – it’s radar wave-absorbing materials. This thing has always been very mystic ever since the very beginning of the spread of the rumour regarding some Taiwanese scientists who worked for the Government of the United States in the defense department developing stealth technology coming back in Taiwan and joining the NCSIST. Rumour has it this material has been tested with the AT-TC-3 Trainer (picture below) and the result has been tremendous, and then a couple of years later there’s this picture above on NCSIST’s website – what does this all mean? No one can say for sure.The AT-TC-3 Trainer, Taiwan’s very first homegrown manned aircraft using the turbofan engine.Conceptual art of the homegrown next-gen fighter jet of Taiwan’s, unofficially called the ADF (Advanced Defense Fighter). This isn’t the actual design but depiction by fans. As you can see, it to a degree resembles the design of the Boeing X-32 (picture below) as the weapon bays are put aside for the inlet to be right in the middle beneath the fuselage, yet unlike the Boeing X-32, the ADF will be powered by two engines (this is officially confirmed), just like the F-22. Based on the reports so far, the engines will use turbine blades made of High-Entropy Superalloys, superior to the last generation of nickel-based single-crystal superalloys, and be equipped with the thrust vectoring nozzle mentioned above, all homegrown. The fuselage has also been confirmed to massively adopt AIDC’s composite materials, and be equipped with homegrown AESA radar made of GaN, with the whole body of the aircraft coated with NCSIST’s radar wave-absorbing materials. The ROC Airforce has said they need 130 units of the ADF in total, and the project has officially started.The Boeing X-32, a 5th-gen combat aircraft.‘Teng-Yun’ the large-size Attack UAV developed by the NCSIST, capable of carrying missiles.This engine above is the J85-GE-21, most famously known for powering the F-5 fighter jet family. Taiwan used to be a main F-5 operator, but now these jets are considered outdated by the ROC military and only 23 units of them are currently in service in Taiwan. Instead of scrapping the J85-GE-21, the military has decided to make better use of it – they want to reverse-engineer it and develop a more refined version, with new materials and technology. The military didn’t say what they wanted to do with the new version of the J85-GE-21, so a lot of people are guessing. Some say the new J85 will power new missiles, but well that’s too large don’t they think? If Taiwan were to develop missiles that big, I’d certainly wonder what’s in the warhead. Other people say maybe the new J85 is for a new UAV, which actually sounds more convincing to me.The RQ-4 Global Hawk, largest UAV developed by the US, powered by a single engine whose thrust is slightly larger than two J85 combined. If the ROC military plans to develop a new UAV equipped with a ‘more advanced’ J85, the new UAV may not necessarily be as large as the Global Hawk, but will definitely be much larger than the Teng-Yun.The airborne AESA radar developed by the NCSIST, with the material’s being GaAs (gallium arsenide) and the power of each individual T/R Module’s being at 12w. A fighter jet usually has 800 - 1,500 modules depending on how large the jet is, and thus the peak power of the whole AESA radar is summed up at 9.6 - 18kw. Just the other day, the NCSIST has made public its technology of GaN (gallium nitride) materials that will elevate the power of each individual T/R Module up to 50 - 100w or more has matured and can replace the GaAs if required[33][33][33][33]. The T/R Module power determines everything regarding the capability of the AESA radar. Japan, despite being able to build the AESA radar on its own, the power of Japan’s homegrown GaAs T/R Module each is as low as 2–3w, and only rises up to 6w when displaced by its homegrown GaN T/R Module. Taiwan, Japan and the US are the only three nations thus far that can build the AESA radar with GaN materials while the other nations that have homegrown AESA radar still encounter technical issues.Founded in late 2018 and located in Hsinchu, Tron Future Tech is a spin-off company from National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), specialising in development of AESA radar systems, including the most advanced airborne AESA radar full solutions for the 5th generation fighter jets. The main research teams of the company are from NCTU and NCSIST. Now being an administrative institution (行政法人), NCSIST is no longer a pure government agency, meaning as long as the Government permits, NCSIST can export its own defense technology, which is usually developed together with research teams from top universities in Taiwan, namely NTU (台大), NTHU (清大), NCTU (交大) and NCKU (成大). Tron Future Tech offers both GaAs and GaN AESA radar technology, each T/R Module being capable of generating from low as 0.01w up to high as 100w of power, covering from civilian applications up to the most lethal military use, which I believe as of now the only other country that possibly has the same capability is the United States. An AESA radar system this powerful (100w per T/R Module) would enable a modern fighter jet to slaughter fighter jets of the 4th generation (including 4.0 – 4.99) in an aero battle, and make hostile real 5th generation jets such as the F-35 and F-22 much less dangerous in that it can reduce their stealth ability. I’ve recently learnt that other than Indonesia, some South Asian/Southeast Asian countries are also conceiving programmes for development of the 5th generation fighter jets, and apparently NCSIST sees the market.Another fan-made design of Taiwan’s homegrown next-gen fighter jet. Apparently this was made before the ROC Air Force officially confirmed a part of the specification of the jet because in this design, the jet only has one engine whereas the military has said the jet will be twin-engine. Thus far, according to the military and NCSIST, we can be certain that the jet will have an AESA system, stealth coating, low RCS appearance and two large engines equipped with 2-D thrust vectoring nozzles (-30° ~ +30° vertical, -15° ~ +15° horizontal, 45° per second. Prototype of the nozzle was developed by NCKU (成大) and handed to NCSIST in 2011 for the prototype to be further polished), but we don’t know if the jet will have a weapon bay. A weapon bay isn’t high-tech, yet while it can significantly reduce the RCS of the jet, it also adds up a lot of weight, reducing maneuverability, so it’ll make sense for a 5th gen fighter jet to have a weapon bay only when the jet has high TWR (thrust-to-weight ratio) engine(s). The military hasn’t confirmed whether a weapon bay will be a part of the design or not.Reliable sources said the homegrown next-gen fighters may have delta wings or a variant of delta wings. Delta-wing planes that are currently or were once in service, for example, the F-16XL (the one highlighted in the pic in the top-left corner), concord (top-right), and Eurofighter Typhoon (bottom). Some proposed concepts for future fighters also adopt delta wings, such as the Boeing F/A-XX (pic below), a 6th-generation fighter, the whole plane itself is giant delta wings.Both of the Boeing F/A-XX (left) and the Franco-German next-gen fighter (right) are delta-wing aircraft.The two images above are from a video recording the testing of the F125. The testing as well as the development of the engine was done at AIDC, in the 1980s. The TWR of a turbofan engine is highly correlated with the temperature at turbine inlet, the higher the temperature, the higher the TWR. There are two ways to achieve a high temperature at inlet of the turbine – one is to use aerodynamic mechanism of the engine itself to cool down the blades to increase heat durability, which is a technology that the US excels at, with the UK being a remote second and every other country far behind, the other is to build the blades with more advanced materials (superalloys), which is what Japan excels at, leaving both the US and Europe far behind. Advancing in research and development of high-entropy materials, Taiwan is in the process of surpassing Japan as the one leading country in metallurgy, hence hopefully, combining with the knowhow and experience that Taiwan has acquired developing the F125 (with the US) and the Kung-Peng (independently), this will make developing a high TWR turbofan engine possible, enabling Taiwan’s new jet to have a weapon bay, leading to extremely low RCS values. According to ‘Academic and Research Programme for National Defense Technology’ (國防科技學術研究計畫) released by Ministry of National Defense (國防部) and Ministry of Science and Technology (科技部), the military will be testing HESA turbine blades designed to be on a par with the nickel-based single-crystal superalloy turbine blades used in the turbofan engine F119 this year (2019).The military has confirmed that for development of the homegrown 5th generation fighter jet, a new base serving as the aerospace research and development centre will be established and located in Chiayi County, a geographical midpoint between Taoyuan City (where NCSIST is located) and Kaohsiung City (where AIDC’s department responsible for engine development is in). The picture here shows the Taiwan booth at Japan International Aerospace Exhibition 2018. AIDC is a major supplier of critical parts for the turbofan engine Trent 7000 and the only Asian supplier for the MRJ (Mitsubishi SpaceJet)[34][34][34][34][35][35][35][35].Turbofan engine F119, the F-22 is equipped with two of them.The weapon bay of the F-22.The F125 has a TWR of 7.02, which is pretty standard for a turbofan engine developed in the ‘80s. The highest temperature at inlet of the turbine is 1,482K (1,209°C). The TWR of a turbofan engine can increase by 10% for roughly every 100K elevation at turbine inlet. With heat capability between 1,310°C – 1,400°C, HESA turbine blades are expected to allow 2,178K (1,905°C) – 2,464K (2,191°C) of temperature maximum at inlet of the turbine, and thus without even improving the structural design of the F125 for better engine aerodynamics, simply by using HESA turbine blades to increase heat durability, the TWR of the engine would be able to reach 11.9 - 13.91, larger than the F119 (10) and F135 (11.47). It does seem doable for Taiwan’s homegrown next generation fighter jet to have an internal weapon bay.The heat capability of a turbine blade is three things combined: the materials of the blade, the cooling system of the blade, and the TBC (thermal barrier coating) on the blade. For example, a turbine blade made of 6th gen nickel-based single-crystal superalloy TMS-238 can bear 1,150°C. With the cooling holes and tunnels in such a TMS-238 turbine blade, 250°C more durability against heat is also guaranteed. Then the TBC on the blade provides 400°C more protection against heat. So in total, this turbine blade made of TMS-238 would allow 1,800°C (TMS-238 + cooling system + TBC) at turbine inlet.This is not a bowl of milk or white gel. It’s Al2O3, a TBC material developed by NCSIST. The material is ‘sprayed’ onto the blade via plasma spraying or similar methods. Image from NCSIST’s website.Strictly speaking, TBC is a two-layer material (the TGO layer is something that inevitably grows itself due to the extreme working environment in the engine, so I don’t count it a third layer), one layer called “bondcoat”, the other is the ceramics itself. The bondcoat layer is in charge of preventing the base material of the blade from becoming corroded and oxidised. Research has found high-entropy materials to be promising for more advanced bondcoat applications.Fifth gen fighter jet F-22′s AN/APG-77 AESA radar, a Northrop Grumman’s product. Each individual T/R Module has 12 w of power.The Inconel Alloy 800H, a type of superalloys developed by the SMC (Special Metals Corporation), an American company. It can sustain 982 °C of heat, and while not strong enough to endure forces (so you can’t use it to build turbochargers or aero turbine blades as both are rotating components, which generate forces, especially the latter - the speed at the tip of a rotating aero turbine blade is almost sonic, generating a centrifugal force so large that it’s deadly destructive to any materials that aren’t strong enough), it is excellent in corrosion resistance. Hence the Inconel Alloy 800H is widely adopted as the material to build the critical equipment - chemical reactors, used in petroleum, energy, and many other heavy industries. As of now, Taiwan, America, Germany and Japan are responsible for the production of Inconel Alloy 800H of the entire world because they’re the only four countries that know how to manufacture it.A petroleum chemical reactor under construction.Other than metallurgy, Taiwan’s also advanced in materials science where no metal is concerned. The picture above is not hairs but carbon fibers. Carbon fibers, as the name suggests, are fibers made of carbon. They’re very strong – 10 times greater than the strength of steel, and light – only one fifth the weight of the same amount of stainless steel, and what’s more important is carbon fibers, just like superalloys, are highly resistant to heat. Therefore they’re widely used in industries of aviation, aerospace, and of course military. Carbon fibers can be classified as three types – low-end, mid-end and high-end. How we determine the types of carbon fibers is by measuring their modulus (unit: GPa), the higher the modulus, the higher the class. Low- and mid-end carbon fibers range between 227-241 GPa and 276-345 GPa respectively, while high-end carbon fibers are well above 345 GPa. The production of carbon fibers is very technically demanding and as a result only 5 nations are capable of manufacturing them. Most carbon fibers manufacturers in the world aim at low- and mid-end markets, producing carbon fibers that are appreciated by sport and automobile industries. On the contrary, high-end carbon fibers, being strategic materials as they are basically used exclusively in aviation, aerospace and military – for example, the making of advanced nuclear warheads and hypersonic aircraft (missiles flying at above 5 Mach included), are controlled items worldwide, but the good news is high-end carbon fibers are extremely difficult to produce. Carbon fibers were invented by the Japanese, so it’s not surprising the Japanese possess the knowledge required to produce high-end carbon fibers. Other than the Japanese, the Taiwanese are the other people that have the know-how regarding how to produce high-end carbon fibers. Thus far, Taiwan and Japan are the only two countries on the surface of this planet that can manufacture carbon fibers having a modulus greater than 345 GPa, while the other carbon fibers manufacturers (Germany, France and America) are still in the low/mid ranges.High-end carbon fibers with a modulus of 380 GPa, only Formosa Plastics Corporation (Taiwan)[36][36][36][36], Toray (Japan), Toho (Japan) and Mitsubishi (Japan) can produce. Tairyfil is the brand name of Formosa Plastics Corporation’s carbon fibers.The new headquarter of Formosa Plastics Corporation, in Neihu District, Taipei. Formosa Plastics Corporation is one of the largest chemistry companies in Taiwan, specialising not only in development of plastics or plastics-based materials/substances.This is a Lamborghini car named Sesto Elemento, one of the most expensive automobiles made of carbon fibers.Half of a Boeing 787 is made of high-end carbon fibers.The image above is a Wankel engine independently developed by NCSIST. Wankel engines are favourable in many aspects in that they can produce large power even at a small size, take the engine here for instance, it displaces 260 c.c., which is one sixth that of a regular 1,500 c.c. Car engine’s, yet it has 42 horsepower of output, which is about one third the same regular 1,500 c.c. Car engine’s power. Wankel engines are difficult to develop due to high demand for materials and precision of parts, particularly the latter. I’m not aware of any Asian countries having independently developed (meaning, not under licenses or technological transfer) any Wankel engines except Taiwan and Japan. Japan (Mazda) actually obtained licenses from Germany to produce Wankel engines in the beginning in the ‘60s, but it then successfully developed its own patents decades after and now no longer needs licenses. Taiwan is a different case as Taiwan started all from scratch. The NCSIST developed Wankel engines for UAVs and powered exoskeletons.As you can see, in comparison with a typically small-sized engine also developed for powered exoskeletons by an American company (I think it’s Raytheon), NCSIST’s Wankel engine is slightly heavier, but it also has larger power, which would make up for the extra weight and actually result in a lighter engine for a soldier to carry.A powered exoskeleton developed by Raytheon. The engine is usually on the back, but you can’t see it from this angle. Many countries have plans to develop military powered exoskeletons. Nevertheless, thus far only a few of them have been able to successfully develop small yet powerful engines, the most crucial technology that developing a powered exoskeleton requires. There would be nothing difficult about development of a military exoskeleton if a military exoskeleton didn’t need to be powered by a small beast, but then an exoskeleton without a source of power is only a burden.A powered exoskeleton named ‘HAL’ developed by Cyberdyne, a Japanese company. Instead of using an engine, it uses a motor as the supply of power, causing its slowness and generally weaker bearing for force, but it should still be fine because HAL is for medical use, not military.NCSIST’s Wankel products are transferrable items, meaning private sectors can obtain the technology from NCSIST as long as they are willing to pay. The image above is a product from AeroJones Aviation, a Taiwanese company specialising in light sport aircraft development except the engine. As far as I know, AeroJones Aviation produces the engines under licenses from Germany. All AeroJones’ aircraft use piston engines, but maybe someday the company would consider Wankel engines to develop new products like the Diamond DA20 (picture below).The Diamond DA20, a famous European light sport aircraft that has variant models, of which some are powered by Wankel engines. Anyway, AeroJones or Diamond, their products have nothing to do with ordinary people like you and me because they’re toys only for the rich, meh.Taiwan’s advanced military technology was also discernible from what happened in 2016 - one stupid soldier accidentally launched a missile. It was a domestically built supersonic anti-ship missile named ‘Hsiung-Feng III’.Hsiung-Feng III Anti-Ship Missile, this picture was taken years before the accident.It hit a fishing boat. A single fishing boat, in a large open area where no other ships were seen. The missile could have gone straight into the ocean since there was no set target for it (as it was launched accidentally), yet, it hit a fishing boat. What this represented was the missile was highly precise in that unlike military ships, fishing boats would only have very minimal RCS (Radar Cross-Section) to be detected, nevertheless the missile was capable of detecting the boat no matter how minimal this tiny lonely boat’s RCS was, and took it for an enemy vehicle. The missile didn't explode because fishing boats were too light to trigger an explosion (a safety design in case the missile hits anything that isn’t a military vehicle or building; military units, due to their armour, armament load and structural design for defense purposes, are much heavier than civilian ones, and therefore the collision between a military unit and the missile is strong enough to result in an explosion). It would have been a different story had what was hit been a military ship.A typical RCS diagram.The Tuo Chiang-Class Stealth Corvette, being in commission since 2014. This picture (as well as the 78 pictures following this one) is irrelevant to the missile accident but I find the Tuo Chiang-Class Stealth Corvette a good example as to show the capability of the Taiwanese shipbuilding industry - what Taiwan’s always been good at. The Tuo Chiang-Class Stealth Corvette carries 16 missiles - the most heavily armed corvette in the world - of which 8 are the Hsiung-Feng III Anti-Ship Missiles, the other 8 being the Hsiung-Feng II Anti-Ship Missiles. It’s also equipped with an OTO Melara 76 MM Gun and the Phalanx CIWS to defend itself with, being able to lock and counterattack enemy anti-ship missiles from 10 km away. It’s fast, travelling at a speed of 43.7knots per hour, equaling 81 km per hour. It’s light, displacing only 502 tons, which means it can berth at any harbours - even shallow ones - this is very important as deep military harbours are usually among the first targets to be destroyed in the first couple of hours in war. It’s stealthy, as it has very little RCS - a couple of months ago one fishing boat coming back home in the evening ran into an older type of ships from the Tuo Chiang warship family (picture below) and the captain of the fishing boat claimed there was nothing on the radar. Dangerous, fast, light and stealthy – raptors.The Kuang Hua VI-Class Missile Boat, a stealth ship from the Tuo Chiang warship family, which the radar system of a fishing boat failed to detect and resulted in a collision accident in 2017[37][37][37][37]. The prototype of this ship was launched in 2003.Model of the diesel submarine planned to build from 2017 to 2025. The fleet will comprise 8 submarines, displacing 3,000 tons each. The blueprint design of the submarines has been finished while the details take a little bit longer - they won’t be set until December, 2019. The lead ship is scheduled to enter commission in 2024, and 2025 for the entire fleet. Each of the submarines will cost 1.3 billion dollars at maximum – a number that would be too low if major technological transfer were involved, considering each of Australia’s new diesel submarines in the same class with Taiwan’s costs 2.9 billion dollars under major technological transfer of France. So it’s pretty clear Taiwan’s new submarines will be mostly homegrown (on a component-to-component basis), with the design and integration of submarine engineering being the only thing we have to acquire assistance from other countries as we have never built any large underwater vehicles before. Fortunately, submarines are the only weapon Taiwan needs other nations’ assistance among all the ongoing projects of Taiwan’s homegrown military vehicles. The most difficult part about building a modern submarine - if not taking its internal design into consideration - is the frontal part of the submarine in that the frontal part of a submarine has to be extremely precise in terms of its shape, calculated by the supercomputer in order to distribute water pressure surgically evenly, or the sea water will either break in the submarine starting from the frontal part, or slowly lead the submarine to deformation as time goes by. To achieve such precisely even pressure distribution, sophisticated welding technology is required as one tiny air bubble caused by unsophisticated welding in the steel used to build the frontal part of a submarine, is enough to ruin the entire pressure distribution setting. To this day, there’re only a few countries that can build the frontal part of the submarine, most of which are the G7 members, while the other submarine operators such as India simply have to ship the frontal parts of submarines from them. Taiwan however, is one non-G7 member that has successfully developed this technology, which I think is called HWD Welding (not sure though). On the contrary, it has costed South Korea billion dollars to acquire the said technology from the Germans (South Korea’s current submarines in commission are all German submarines manufactured in South Korea under Germany’s license. For example, the KSS-II Submarines are exactly the German Type 214 Submarines) whilst submarines of the PRC’s also have their Soviet root.What you’re looking at is STOBA, an advanced and revolutionary material developed by the ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute) to prevent lithium batteries from burning. Lithium batteries are a very powerful and efficient independent source of electricity, hence are ideal for being used as the electric propulsion system of the diesel engines in submarines - if only they were not that dangerous, as they can become quite unstable and readily to burn (and then of course, explode) at any moment when not controlled well. In fact, there’ve been a couple of aircraft accidents caused by lithium batteries. But we’re talking about diesel submarines here, currently, there have been three propulsion systems – the AIP (Air-Independent Propulsion), the lead-acid battery, and the lithium battery. Lithium batteries are light-weighted, generating energy 4 times more powerful than that of lead-acid batteries’, therefore the vehicle (submarine) can move very fast. Also, lithium batteries allow the vehicle to stay underwater much longer than the other two propulsion systems, increasing the vehicle’s survival rates and stealthiness, yet they’re too dangerous to have any modern submarines in operation really use them. The other two propulsion systems, in comparison with lithium batteries, are inferior except they're a lot safer, having been put to use for a long history. The AIP has very limited power, causing the submarine to move extremely slowly, and unlike batteries that are quiet for all eternity, a working AIP system has a lot of noises while sound waves can travel for a long distance in water, which in return reduces survival rates of the submarine. As to lead-acid batteries, while they generate a lot more energy than the AIP (so the vehicle can be faster), they are quite heavy, significantly adding extra weight to the vehicle, and like lithium batteries, they too do explode (but a lot easier to prevent than infamous lithium batteries). So diesel submarines usually have both the AIP and lead-acid batteries working together, with the number of lead-acid batteries cut in half, thus the vehicle will be faster than when exclusively using the AIP, at the same time being lighter than when only using lead-acid batteries (to a full number), Japanese submarines being a very good example. Luckily, thanks to STOBA, we can now use lithium batteries safely. The Japanese have acquired authority (by paying, of course) from the ITRI to manufacture lithium batteries using STOBA under ITRI’s license, and it’s been reported the new submarines that Japan’s currently building will only adopt lithium batteries, completely abandoning the AIP and lead-acid battery technologies that Japanese submarines have been relying on for more than a decade. Taiwan’s new submarines have been confirmed to employ lithium batteries as well. Taiwan, Japan and Germany are the 3 best known countries for advanced battery technology. Despite Japan's and Germany’s being better experienced than Taiwan overall as they both have longer history of battery technology development, they’ve never been able to reduce the probability of a burning or exploding lithium battery down to an absolute zero, nothing like STOBA. Dr Yoshio Nishi (西美緒), known as ‘Father of Lithium Batteries’, a Japanese scientist working in the fields of electrical engineering and materials science, currently a professor at Stanford University, recalled how he felt when introduced to STOBA for the first time, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ he said, then went on to describe his feeling by citing A.K Clarke’s law: ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’.In January 2019, a part of the design of Taiwan’s homegrown submarines has been officially confirmed. The submarine will adopt an X-shape tail and a front that has a curved top but a flat bottom. This kind of design is unusual as only a few submarines have similar appearance, but this design has been proven to be superb for stealth. The flat bottom of the front is for housing a much larger and more advanced sonar system than one that a submarine having a curved bottom would use. As of now, the submarines that resemble the most to Taiwan’s homegrown submarines in development is the Japanese Sōryū-class submarines (the picture here). Both Taiwan and Japan are island states, with similar oceanic environments and naval defense strategies, so that’s understandable.Spain is traditionally known as a country having high naval strength. The Spanish Isaac Peral class submarines adopt a design that is more conservative and common, because as you can see, the front of the Isaac Peral class submarine is curved both top and bottom, and the tail is cross-shaped. This design has been proven to be very reliable.The hulls of Taiwan’s submarines will be constructed by MRY (銘榮元公司), using CSC’s (a Taiwanese steel corporation) HSLA-80 high yield strength steel. The steel has been tested and reported to be able to sustain hydrostatic pressure equaling that at 900 metres underwater. The actual number of the submarine’s depth capability will be smaller due to inevitable change in the mechanical properties of the steel during the making of the hull, but will still be good enough for diesel submarines.March 2019, the military has confirmed that NCSIST is developing an underwater vertical launch system for Taiwan’s homegrown submarines, but the lead ship (the first one) won’t be equipped with it. The image above features the SMX Ocean, a French concept for a new generation of diesel submarines.A vertical launch system allows a submarine to strike targets on land, which clearly shows Taiwan’s defense strategy has been changing to a more offensive approach, instead of putting emphasis on almost pure self-defense. The picture here is the Chien Lung-class submarine, one of Taiwan’s submarines currently in service, since the 1980s.Taiwan used to have a plan of building a submarine base in Hualien County in the early 2000s, but it wasn’t executed because at the end Taiwan decided to postpone expanding the submarine fleet. Nearly two decades later, now new submarines have been under development, and hence it’s foreseeable that the plan of building a submarine base will be back on the table.A submarine base is a navy base specifically designed for submarines for stealth purpose and offers the submarines it houses a quick access to deepwater. A couple of nautical miles away from the east coast of Taiwan lie two main trenches on the west part of the Pacific, both easily more than five thousand metres deep. What can be better?From a strategic point of view, Taiwan is sort of lucky to be geographically located in a place that not only can directly control the maritime trade routes between East Asia and other parts of the world, but is also guaranteed direct access to deep water (the Pacific Ocean). Look at those countries on Asia: the Korean Peninsula is blocked by the Japanese islands/archipelagos, and China is blocked by the island of Taiwan, Japan’s southern archipelagos (and there’s a US base) and the Philippines while the entire Southeast Asia is also grounded in the small pool of the South China Sea except Myanmar (has direct access to the Indian Ocean), Thailand (the same as Myanmar) and Indonesia. Basically, most of Asia is blocked by the first island chain, meaning military ships (submarines included) from countries on Asia, when entering the Pacific Ocean, can’t avoid detection of the sonar systems of the countries that consist of the first island chain – therefore, everyone knows what these ships are doing. This is the main reason that China desires for Taiwan because there hasn’t been a modern great power or superpower that has no direct access to an ocean. Sure, the PLN is one of the strongest navies in the world, but being unable to access the Pacific Ocean privately would always make it a handicapped force no matter how strong it is. Slowly as we progress into the era of the 2020s, with the geographical conditions and technological capabilities that Taiwan has, along with the economy of Taiwan that will eventually grow beyond $80,000 (PPP) and $40,000 (exchange rates) per capita, also with the growing military strength of Taiwan considered, Taiwan will eventually become a state very similar to the G7 countries in terms of essential qualities, what’s hindering Taiwan will be only quantity – landmass and population.TECO is one of the most major home appliance brands based in Taiwan, offering wide selection of washing machines, air conditioners, refrigerators, TV and etc for ordinary consumers like you and me, but few people - even the Taiwanese themselves - know that TECO has never been just a company that sells home appliances in the first place. TECO has been, in nature and since the very beginning, a corporation that designs and develops heavy electric equipment for the energy and various other heavy industries, including shipbuilding, several decades before stepping into the home appliance markets. The homegrown submarines of Taiwan’s have been confirmed to employ electric equipment from TECO as parts of their propulsion systems, similar to what’s shown in the picture below.A large motor developed by TECO for the shipbuilding and energy industries.TECO Texas branch and some of the employees.Similar to TECO, TATUNG’s also a major Taiwanese home appliance brand and is especially known for its kitchen products, but again, few people - yeah, even the Taiwanese themselves - know that TATUNG, like TECO, has never been just a company that sells home products. TATUNG’s in fact a developer and manufacturer of heavy electric equipment used in the energy and heavy industries (picture below).TATUNG heavy electric equipment used in a power plant operated by Taiwan Power Company (台灣電力公司).The amphibious transport dock (bigger one) currently under development, scheduled to be in commission in 2021. We need amphibious transport docks because we have to guard our islands in South China Sea from threats from countries such as Vietnam and China, and amphibious transport docks help project the land forces (tanks, mainly) from Taiwan onto any of our other islands.The ACS (Advanced Combat System) Destroyer scheduled to build after 2020, displacing 9,000-10,000 tons. They are the Taiwanese homegrown equivalents to the American ACS (Aegis Combat System) vehicles, equipped with the Hai-Gong III, Hsiung-Feng II, Hsiung-Feng III missiles and the Sea Oryx Missile System, along with an OTO Melara 76 MM Gun. It has been confirmed by the NCSIST yesterday (20/06/2017) that the AESA radar system employed by the Advanced Combat System Destroyer will adopt homegrown GaN T/R Modules (mentioned above) with the core battle system’s being NCSIST’s OACCS (Open Architecture Command Control System), the Taiwanese Aegis system.A glimpse at a corner of a working OACCS.The Sea Oryx Missile System.The missile frigates planned to build from 2019 to 2021, each displacing 5,000 tons. The fleet will comprise 15 missile frigates. Taiwan currently has 22 frigates and we want more.Many people don’t know, that at the Maritime & Defense Expo held in Kaohsiung, September 2018, the ROC Navy confirmed to actually have a plan of developing amphibious landing helicopter dock ships (or more commonly referred to as ‘helicopter carriers’) for the future, displacing 22,000 tons, slightly larger than the Japanese JS Izumo (picture below). The JS Izumo is called a ‘destroyer’, but is actually more like a helicopter carrier, displacing 19,500 tons. Note, when we talk about the sizes of ships, we refer to their ‘standard tons’, not the tons when they’re fully loaded.The JS Izumo. Japan’s going to modify it into an aircraft carrier.Tian-Gong III Anti-Tactical Ballistic Missile, with an operational range of 200 km and an interception altitude of 70 km (enhanced version), travelling at a speed more than 4 times faster than the sound (the general consensus is 5–7 Mach). It has been tested successfully via the Seaborne Hot Vertical Launching System developed by the NCSIST (picture below) and the ACS destroyers have been confirmed to be equipped with it. The Tian-Gong III Anti-Tactical Ballistic Missile is basically, the Taiwanese homegrown equivalent to the American Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), whose interception altitude is known to be beyond 40 km.The Seaborne Tian-Gong III Anti-Tactical Ballistic Missile, aka the ‘Hai-Gong III’. It’s a seaborne vertically launched missile that starts (ignites) its engine right in the launch cell (which is vertically buried in the ship, under the decks. On the other hand, a seaborne non-vertical launching system has the launch cell completely exposed on the decks) when fired – hence ‘hot’ launch, as opposed to ‘cold’ launch (picture below) – an approach where the engine of the missile starts only after the missile is pushed out of the launch cell by compressed air at room-temperature. The significance of the seaborne hot vertical launching system is that it’s much lighter in weight and smaller in size compared with the cold one, in return allowing the ship to be equipped with a significantly larger number of missiles and armament. Also, hot launch is much faster, and has smaller RT (Reaction Time), increasing the survival rates of the ship. Yet a seaborne hot vertical launching system is difficult to develop in that it requires, again, advanced materials technologies, to build the heat-resistant inner walls of the launch cell, or the entire ship will start to burn as soon as the missiles get fired owing to the launch cells’ ultrahigh temperature under the decks. Let me tell you how many countries have their own homegrown seaborne hot vertical launching system as of late 2017: Taiwan, America and France. The entire Asia except Taiwan relies on America’s seaborne hot vertical launching system, and as the second most powerful military powerhouse, Russia hasn’t successfully developed a seaborne hot vertical launching system, still using the cold one. China, has claimed to have developed the hot one, but so far there’s no evidence that supports its claim – no launch tests, no video proof, no exhibit – nothing, as a result, the most prestigious non-governmental source of military intelligence – Jane’s Information Group – remains skeptical and doesn’t buy it, as the hard evidence says only that China relies on the seaborne cold vertical launching system. Military is a science, not a religion where faith and belief work, so any claims without evidence are really only claims.The Seaborne Tien-Chien II Missile, aka the ‘Hai-Chien II’, a vertically launched missile, cold.I originally didn’t want to introduce this missile because we barely know anything about it, but I think it should still deserve a place. This is the Hsiung-Feng IIE Cruise Missile (‘HF2E’ for short), operational range 1,500 km max (600 km minimum), maximum speed 0.85 Mach, propelled by a turbofan engine. It’s one of the two homegrown medium-ranged cruise missiles of Taiwan’s - the other being the Yun-Feng Cruise Missile. The HF2E is land-based, but it can also be seaborne, launched by water vehicles. It was in 2013 that the HF2E had been for the first time officially confirmed by the Government to have been deployed (sources have said the estimated number of unit lies between 500 and 1,000). Other than these, everything else about this missile has never been known to the public.This is um … the Yun-Feng Cruise Missile. I originally didn’t want to bring this missile up, either, as we know even less about it than we do about the HF2E. The Yun-Feng Cruise Missile is supersonic (4–5 Mach), propelled by a ramjet engine, maximum operational range 2,000 km (1,200 km minimum). Initially, it was about to go into production in 2014, but in order to befriend China, Ying-Jeou Ma cancelled the (production) project. Now another party’s in power, and multiple sources’ve said this missile has been under production, yet the Government has neither confirmed nor denied it.The eleven images above are fetched from a video filming the most recent launch test (December, 2018) of a new missile developed by NCSIST (I know I can simply put the video here, but I prefer pictures for consistency). It hasn’t been officially confirmed what kind of missiles this is, NCSIST’s been very low-key on this – some say it’s a new long-ranged missile (ICBMs), while others say it’s the Yun-Feng cruise missile revealed to the public for the first time. I personally think this is a new type of Tian-Gong anti-tactical ballistic missile, based on the fact that my ATC colleagues in Taiwan told me they were informed of airspace closure of that area that day, with the height for restriction being unlimited. They heard it was a surface-to-air missile, whose range was beyond the Kármán line (the boundary between the space and the atmosphere of the Earth), even possibly more than 150 km. If so, that’s beyond the interception capability of THAAD. NCSIST hasn’t officially confirmed anything yet, but one thing many people probably would all agree: countries near Taiwan geographically really should be glad Taiwan’s freaking small and isn’t interested in invading anybody.In January 2019, the missile launch test in December last year has been confirmed to be a new type of the Tian-Gong missile. This new type of the Tian-Gong missile can intercept up to the Kármán line. Thus far, only Taiwan, America and Russia have been successful in independently developing an anti-tactical ballistic missile system that is this capable (for example, the USA has THAAD, and Russia has the S-400 Triumph). The picture here is a Tian-Gong II missile.The truck in the picture is a homegrown Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) called Thunderbolt 2000, able to fire multiple kinds of weaponries, one of which is the Ching-Yun FAE, an explosive that can also be carried by the IDF and F-16. The Ching-Yun FAE, when exploding, heats up the air up to 2,500 °C within 50 square kilometres of range in a few seconds, burning everything and sparing no life in the area. Due to its cruelty, Taiwan, the developer of such a weapon, will not use it unless Taiwan’s invaded (basically, by the People’s Republic of China) militarily and treated with the same or more horrendous cruelty while international force of justice is not available to impose sanction against the invader (basically, the People’s Republic of China). Us the Taiwanese people are friendly and hospitable in general (in East Asia, overall, we are probably the nicest fellows to foreigners – no matter where you’re from, exception being if you’re a loud-mouthed PRC nationalist that goes on about your fantasy of ‘reunification’, ‘liberating the island of Taiwan’ or ‘killing all the Taiwanese because all we want is just the island not people’ EVEN to our faces), and we don’t go around threatening other countries. The Ching-Yun FAE is the last resort for us to self-defend - considering we’ve got no nuke - when our lives are at risk and when our homes are to be taken, but given that we’re in such a tough situation, we would still consider using the Ching-Yun FAE an immoral act. Therefore, we will NOT make use of it unless the UN/NATO/US-Japan Alliance gives us no proper aids after the invader has committed war crime first – otherwise we would be no better than the savage invader and its barbaric, nationalistic people who know neither human rights nor law.The YM Window Cargo Ship, largest ship Taiwan’s built, displacing 145,136 tons. The displacement of the largest aircraft carrier in the world thus far is 106,300 tons.I know this one looks like a photoshoped picture, but no, it is real-life. Meet the MV Blue Marlin, a ship-shipping ship (I like how it sounds) designed and built by CSBC, a Taiwanese shipbuilding company, back in 1999. The buyer of MV Blue Marlin was a Dutch firm. I saw the ship once, the year it was built, and I was completely in awe. It was the second time I’d been thoroughly moved by modern engineering of extraordinary things, the first time being when I had my first encounter with a Boeing airplane.MV Blue Marlin can also do this.Or this, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but that’s actually an aircraft carrier being shipped.An Ocean Alexander yacht. Ocean Alexander’s a Taiwanese brand of yachts. Taiwan’s the fourth largest yacht exporter in the world, following Italy, the Netherlands and America.Two pictures of the interior of an Ocean Alexander yacht.The T91 CQC Battle Rifle, designed and developed by the AVDC (Armoured Vehicle Development Centre, a division of Ministry of National Defense R.O.C.).The Kestrel Anti-armour Rocket, a homegrown rocket that can penetrate most armour vehicles including amphibious tanks, with the only exception being main battle tanks (of the third generation). This convenient and light-weighted individual weapon was developed back in the 1990s when the PLA still had no possibility of being technologically capable of landing any main battle tanks on shore of Taiwan for lacking vessels that could transport such heavy armour vehicles, but things had changed ever since. So Taiwan’s developing something much bigger like the American FGM-148 Javelin (picture below).The soldier on the right is carrying an FGM-148 Javelin, you can see how much bigger it is in comparison with the Kestrel anti-armour rocket. This picture is from Google Images, I think they’re Israeli.The homegrown CM-32 Black Bear (middle, with a tank gun as you can see. The tank gun is also homegrown) and two CM-32 Cloud Leopards. The Cloud Leopard has been in production while a newer type of the Black Bear that features more advanced defense technology and design is being developed. Its prototype will be present at the military & defense exhibition in Taipei, in August, 2017. The Black Bear in this picture is the older type.A closer look at the CM-32 Cloud Leopard. Its main armament is a 30 mm chain gun. The Cloud Leopard had a scandal, that its prototype completely met the designated performance without any problems, yet when went into production with more mature technology and design, the first couple of models of the Cloud Leopards had serious defects in that their chassis - supposed to be one of the strongest parts for hardness - and some other parts of the vehicle, cracked. It turned out that the manufacturer in charge of producing these parts used steel from China for dirt-cheap costs to replace the expensive yet high-quality steel produced by CSC (a Taiwanese steel company). The people responsible ended up in jail for it was illegal.Headquarter of CSC, Kaohsiung.CSC is one of the very handful steel companies in the world that can produce A-286, a superalloy that is widely used to build components of jet engines.The prototype of a newly branched CM-32 Cloud Leopard (unofficially named ‘Cloud Leopard II’). Its future design is to be a self-propelled 120 mm mortar. The ITRI has redesigned the chassis and suspension system of the older type of the CM-32 Mortar to bring the new one.Two pictures of the Cloud Leopard II being tested in the field. In December 2017, it’s been reported the design of the 120 mm mortar’s almost completed and the vehicle’s about to go into production.December 2018, it’s been confirmed that a new type of the Cloud Leopard has been under development (which is then unofficially called ‘Cloud Leopard III’ by many people), whose prototype will attend the military & defense exhibition in Taipei, 2019. Again, the chassis and suspension system have been completely redesigned because the military plans to equip it with larger guns. In the image above, the one closest to the camera is an unarmed type II, the others are type I equipped with chain guns.It’s reported that the army wants 120 mm mortars that have armoured turrets, and hence the homegrown mortars developed based on the Cloud Leopard are going in that direction. The picture here features the Finnish Patria AMOS, a typical 120 mm mortar equipped with an armoured turret.The largest gun that Taiwan has developed independently, a homegrown 155 mm howitzer, using a truck as the vessel. This picture was taken at Taipei military & defense exhibition, 2007. The ROC military has said they have a plan for equipping type III of the Cloud Leopard with 155 mm howitzers – but, the gun will be smaller than the one in the picture here, of course.The CM-12 Brave Tiger Main Battle Tank, an AVDC-modified version of the American M48A3 in the 80′s. The main armament of the CM-12’s is a Taiwanese homegrown 105 mm tank gun, whose original design is from the British L7 105 mm tank gun. The CM-12’s firing system, developed by the NCSIST and considered as advanced as that of the M1 Abrams’ (picture below), is the only thing of the CM-12 that isn’t considered outdated as of today’s standards. Both the CM-12’s tank gun and armour are already no good for helping the tank survive in the battleground setting after 2010, and despite the NCSIST’s having successfully developed reactive armour that outperforms the French GIAT armour for the CM-12, the result’s suggested it is too much of a burden for CM-12’s old engine. Hence, the AVDC is planning to develop new tanks equipped with homegrown 120 mm tank guns along with more modern engines if the budget agrees.The M1 Abrams.A picture of the diesel engine recently developed by a Taiwanese diesel engine manufacturer named Yung-Yeh (永葉. Belonging to Da-Yeh Group (大葉集團)). Da-Yeh used to be a car manufacturer a very long time ago, and it’s good that it hasn’t forgot how to build critical parts of vehicles, returning to the car market not as an automobile manufacturer but as a builder of homegrown advanced diesel engines. This engine has displacement of 2.5 liters, compression ratio being 17.5:1, and 141 horsepower maximum (diesel engines are known to have much smaller horsepower than gas engines at the same size, but they’re still favoured when it comes to larger vehicles such as buses or tanks because they consume much less oil than the gas ones). A modern tank engine usually displaces more than 40 liters since physics says the larger the displacement the larger the horsepower, hence it’s reasonable to expect when this diesel engine is resized to have displacement of that a tank engine normally has, like 45-48 liters or something (for ships and underwater vehicles, the displacement is usually even larger – 50 liters at minimum), the output of its horsepower should at least hit 1,500 or so, enough to propel a modern tank like the German Leopard II. We really need to build new tanks and Yung-Yeh’s diesel engines will do. By the way, so far China is still incapable of independently developing any diesel engines. The engines of the Chinese main battle tanks (ZTZ99 series) are directly from MTU (a German diesel engine manufacturer) with minor Chinese modification under MTU’s license. Actually, all of the engines put in PRC’s so-called ‘homegrown’ military vehicles - be the vehicles tanks, ships, submarines, aircraft or whatever, are all foreign.ESR (Electro Slag Remelting) steel casted by GMTC, a leading Taiwanese corporation specializing in special steel and alloys. GMTC’s technologically on a par with German and Japanese special steel manufacturers and has surpassed them in many areas. In fact, GMTC is the only qualified supplier of special steel for Boeing in Asia. Special steel is nothing like the conventional steel used in construction or regular civilian fields. Instead, it’s almost exclusively employed in aerospace and military. The barrel of a tank gun can only be made of ESR steel (a kind of special steel) that can endure 550 – 650 MPa of explosive pressure. GMTC’s ESR steel is able to sustain up to 1,170 MPa of explosive pressure[38][38][38][38] and hence shall be ideal for the making of tank guns of 120 mm or even larger caliber. It really is only a matter of budget of how much money the army is willing to put to investing in a homegrown main battle tank.Inside the barrel of the German Rh-120 tank gun (120 mm), made of ESR steel that can endure 585 MPa of explosive pressure. The Rh-120 tank gun is employed by the Leopard II, and also used by the Korean K2 main battle tank. The Koreans haven’t been able to cast ESR steel strong enough to independently develop a 120 mm tank gun. This is one of the reasons that GMTC’s products are dominant on Korean special steel market and in shipbuilding industry there when it comes to crucial materials for marine use.The Leopard II, with a turbocharged diesel engine displacing 48 liters, 1,500 horsepower maximum.The Formosat-5, the recently launched Taiwanese optical remote sensing satellite, completely homegrown, with high definition imaging capabilities that despite the Formosat-5 travels at an altitude 700 - 800 km above the surface of the Earth, it can see clearly anything that has 2 metres of length on the ground. Only a handful of countries can domestically design and build optical remote sensing satellite. In fact, among the 12 countries that possess the ability to launch satellites - the UK, America, France, Russia, Japan, Israel, Ukraine, South Korea, India, China, Iran and North Korea, only 5 of them can independently develop optical remote sensing satellites providing high definition imagining functions. It’s been reported though, that Formosa-5′s camera lenses built using cutting-edge optics technology might have been damaged by the rocket due to vibration during the launch, causing imaging defect of the satellite, which is a shame.Ground Control Centre of NSPO (National Space Organization). NSPO’s developing new satellites having even better optical remote sensing capability than the Formosat-5. They’re developing satellites whose resolution will be as high as 0.35 metres (aka, 35 cm), using Taiwan’s CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) technology – ah, materials technology, again.The HTTP-3 rocket, developed by a small team mostly made up of college students. The HTTP-3 is a hybrid-propellant rocket, technologically more advanced than the solid-propellant rocket or liquid-propellant rocket. The HTTP-3 is completely homegrown, including the engine that has 4 tons of maximum thrust. This is incredible, considering how small the team is and has very limited resources, especially financially - yeah, the Taiwanese Government doesn’t give a fuck about the team because it can’t, owing to America’s strong objection to Taiwan’s developing any launch vehicles as launch vehicles share the same technology with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). This is why the Government of Taiwan’s never managed to develop any rockets big enough to carry satellites because if a country can build launch vehicles to transport satellites, it’s a piece of cake for such a country to develop ICBMs, and in the case of Taiwan, being able to develop ICBMs will worry America for putting China on edge. The HTTP-3 is scheduled to launch in Taiwan between 2018 and 2020, and will carry a satellite (America has no excuse to stick its nose into this as the entire plan isn't governmental). Taiwan’s going to be the first country where a civilian organization launches satellites before the Government does (which probably never will) in human history. In comparison to the incredible progress made by such a small, mostly made-up-of-undergraduates team intentionally neglected by the Government and hence receiving literally no national support, the resourceful KARI (Korea Aerospace Research Institute), a governmental agency, had to obtain the technological assistance of Russia to build the second stage of Korea’s solid-propellant rocket, which had 8 tons of maximum thrust, and to leave the first stage completely to Russia due to technological incapability.The HTTP-3 team, the whole team.This man is Dr Chun-Liang Lin, NSPO director. As of October 2018, Taiwan’s had some breakthrough negotiating with America, that America has eventually said ‘alright!’ when Taiwan hopes it to turn a blind eye to Taiwan’s homegrown launch vehicle development. Below is information whose credibility directly goes to NSPO: ‘our main space programme, which is a 43-year long term plan, started from 1991. In the first 15 years, we have developed crucial rocket technology and been able to design satellites with technological assistence of other countries and core parts from them. From 2006 to 2018, the second part of the programme, we have come to be able to independently develop advanced satellites, all homegrown. And starting from Juanuary 2019 to 2034, the last 15 years of the programme, our goal is to further advance in our technology of satellites and launch vehicles, and eventually develop ourselves into a launch-service provider, that we’re going to help private sectors and space-researching insitutes launch their satellites and space vehicles, including those whose destination is an extraterrestrial planet’.The HAPITH-I is a rocket developed by a Taiwan-based aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company, TiSPACE. This rocket has 150 kg of payload, originally scheduled to launch in Taitung on the 27th December, but has been postponed due to concern raised from the locals. TiSPACE is a private and thus far the only Taiwanese space transportation services company. This company partially works with the government and has deep intellectual connections with some of the most prestigious Taiwanese academies. Following the HAPITH-I, TiSPACE’s second rocket currently under development, named HAPITH-V, is planned to launch in the near future. The HAPITH-V has 390 kg of payload, about the same as the Brazilian rocket VLS-1 (pic below), and is able to transport a regular weather satellite like the Formosat-7.The Brazilian rocket VLS-1, 380 kg of payload.The Formosat-7, a Taiwanese weather satellite, launched by SpaceX in June 2019.It’s mostly NSPO that is in charge of development of Taiwan’s aerospace technology, but other major research institutes also have some significant contribution at times. The picture above was shot on the campus of Academia Sinica, the national academy of the country. Academia Sinica’s research covers a wide range of fields. Last year, it was reported that Academia Sinica’s department of electrical engineering, working with a team from National Chiao Tung University (or NTHU, I don’t remember), successfully developed technology that could precisely control the release and de-release of electromagnetic radiation within a very short span of time: 0.00000000000000001 second, yeah, “10^-18 second”. To better understand the concept of “10^-18 second”, it takes the light roughly 1.3 second to circle the Earth, and in “10^-18 second”, the light can only go for as far as 0.0000029979 cm. According to theory of relativity, this leads to potential development of very powerful laser.A solar sail is a type of spacecraft propelled by radiation pressure, but since radiation pressure from natural sources such as the sun is too small, it’d take years for the solar sail to reach a high speed. Now scientists have proposed a different method to propel solar sails - by using artificial source of radiation pressure, ideally laser - they mean the very powerful kind. Theoretically, a solar sail propelled by a couple of GW of laser would be able to reach one fifth of the speed of light, taking 25 mins to reach Mars from the Earth. That’s the most feasible way we have to travel interstellarly as of now before room-temperature superconductors are developed to make mass production of antimatter possible.As the national academy, Academia Sinica naturally grants membership almost only to those of the best reputation academically. The person in the picture here is Dr Yuan-Tseh Lee, a Nobel laureate for chemistry. He grew up in Hsinchu, studied at NTU for his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees (I know some people may not like him for his political stance, but that’s irrelevant here).Dr Shing-Tung Yau, also a member of Academia Sinica, a Fields medalist. He has dual nationality (ROC & USA), been a naturalised American citizen since 1990.Dr Chi-Huey Wong, grew up in Tainan, and went to NTU after graduating from the best high school for male students in Tainan. He was awarded the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 2014. He’s a member of Academia Sinica.Dr Chi-Chih Yao (Andrew Yao), the winner of the ACM A.M. Turing Award in 2000. He grew up and received education in Taiwan, went to America after graduating from NTU. He had nationalities of the ROC and USA when he was awarded the ACM A.M. Turing Award. In 2015, he renounced both of them.Taiwan doesn’t just breed scientists that win prestigious prizes outside of Taiwan; Taiwan also gives prizes to scientists from any part of the world. Dr Hunter, a Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of California San Diego, (with other 2 scientists) was given the Tang Prize (唐獎) in Medicine in 2018. He was also the Wolf Prize laureate in Medicine in 2005.The Tang Prize, founded in 2014 by Samuel Yin, a Taiwanese entrepreneur and philanthropist.Taiwan Photon Source (TPS), located in Hsinchu. It’s a synchrotron, which is a type of particle accelerators, and a great amount of time of the teams from Academia Sinica and NCTU to develop the said ultra-fast control technology of electromagnetic radiation was spent here.What it looks like inside the TPS.The Hsiung-Feng III Anti-Ship Missile - like I have said - is supersonic as it travels 3 times faster than the sound with an operational range of 300 km (400 km for the enhanced version), and there aren't many countries that can build supersonic anti-ship missiles. In fact, there are only 4 nations that can - they are Taiwan, France, Russia and Japan. While China has claimed to be able to build such a kind of missiles and has made quite a few ones, it remains a big question whether China truly can or cannot - as there has never been footage where any of China’s claimed supersonic anti-ship missiles is launched - not even a launch test.In order to avoid enemy radar coverage, anti-ship missiles have to navigate as close to the sea level as possible (just like the picture above), or they’ll get detected and shut down way before hitting their targets. This is one of the main reasons why a supersonic anti-ship missile is extremely difficult to develop technologically – because it’s difficult to reach a near-sonic or even higher speed at anywhere close to the surface of the sea while keeping the missile on the track, as even the most insignificant radial deviation can have the missile easily result in the ocean, let alone the strong drag due to high air density at such a low altitude and ultrahigh heat caused by friction with the air, which can damage the missile. America’s shown interest in Taiwan’s supersonic anti-ship technology, but I don’t know how the deal ends or if there’s been any deal proposed.The ARA San Juan, an Argentinian submarine that has exploded in the middle of the sea shortly after leaving its base a couple of years ago, and only very recently (November, 2018) have its wrecks been found near the Valdes Peninsula. The Hsiung-Feng III anti-ship missile has been a little bit too famous internationally since the fishing boat accident, so famous that some Argentinian media have claimed (March, 2019) that an engine which after investigation, has been concluded to belong to a Hsiung-Feng III anti-ship missile has been found in the wrecks of the ARA San Juan. Last week, NCSIST has clarified this misinformation. Personally, I would say this kind of false allegations from some Argentinian media is ridiculous because first, Taiwan would never put something like the Hsiung-Feng III missile in the global defense market. Second, Taiwan’s legal status is very tricky, which prevents Taiwan from becoming a weaponry exporter. Third, yes, the Hsiung-Feng III anti-ship missile is thus far the world’s fastest supersonic anti-ship missile which also has the longest range (I'm referring to pure anti-ship missiles, not counting those developed from cruise missiles), but the distance between Taiwan and Argentina is way beyond that. Seriously, we may be very technologically advanced, yet we’re still humans, not Martians, a supersonic anti-ship missile that can shoot from Taiwan to hit a submarine near Argentina is Martian technology.Oh wait, I have seemed to forget to mention the inexpensive yet high-quality healthcare system, what Taiwan’s been popularly known for.Healthcare in Taiwan has been too good that many people actually abuse it. A Taiwanese person residing abroad and having citizenship of the country that he resides in may fly half the world when he is very ill to be back in Taiwan for Taiwan to take care of a sick him.I first came across this chart reading a comment written by a Taiwanese Quoran. This chart is fetched from a report from The Daily Telegraph, under a title that says ‘Taiwan Tops The Expat Health Care Charts’. According to the chart, Taiwan ranks first in both quality and affordability for healthcare. Taiwanese people don’t have the most healthy food preferences (actually, pretty unhealthy, like the two pictures below) and life styles, so a great healthcare system can certainly help a lot.Heaven is when you have boba (or, beer if you don’t like sweet) and some Taiwanese fried chicken and watch an NBA game on a nice Friday night, that’s how watching too many NBA games can ruin your health. You’d need a good healthcare system to back you up and allow you to continually ruin your health in heaven.Hocena®, a Taiwanese biotech company’s product that effectively restrains the growth of the RAS mutation tumor in cancer and developmental diseases.Myozyme®, an injected medicine developed by a Taiwanese scientist Dr Yuan-Tsong Chen and his team to significantly elevate the survival rate of patients with the rare but fatal disease called ‘glycogenosis II’, also known as ‘Pompe disease’. This medicine is very expensive, costing 300,000 dollars a year, yet under the healthcare policies in Taiwan, it’s been a lot cheaper.Burixafor®, an injected medicine developed by a Taiwanese company (TaiGen Biotechnology Co., Ltd), used in critical treatment of Multiple Myeloma, Hodgkin's Disease, and Non-hodgkin's Lymphoma. Like Hocena® and Myozyme®, Burixafor® is an orphan drug (孤兒藥), a classification of drugs that is developed for treatment of rare diseases or pathology which is especially complicated in catastrophic illness. Development of orphan drugs is usually more difficult than that of common drugs owing to smaller numbers of samples (patients), more complicated pathology, and has higher risks due to much smaller markets – so, orphan drugs are usually very expensive, and governmental policies will have to kick in or no one will be able to afford them. The Taiwanese pharmaceutical industry has been quite an achiever in this area (orphan drugs), having put various products on the markets domestic and abroad (particularly America), especially when we look at its size.The thing that looks like a horizontally-put metal barrel in the green square box is an RF cavity developed by Shian Biotech (錫安生技), the most crucial equipment of a proton therapy system. Proton therapy is thus far not only the most advanced treatment for developmental diseases and malignant tumours, but also the most expensive (the entire equipment set costs more than 150 million USD). After successfully developing RF cavity technology, Shian Biotech has developed its own brand of proton therapy equipment set - iProton® (picture below).iProton®, the entire set contains 8 systems (including the linear particle accelerator system, where the RF cavity is installed), occupying quite of few rooms on a hospital floor.The picture on the left, well, I know some Taiwanese Quorans probably don’t want to see her (while others may like her) but this picture isn’t about her, it’s about the robotic surgery machine that she’s looking at. The machine is developed by a Taiwanese company (Brain Navi Biotechnology Co., Ltd), and its job is to conduct brain surgery in some specific situations where human doctors may have their limitations. The machine has had real clinical use (pictures on the right and below).The machine has to be highly precise as it’s about the brain. A brain surgery machine that doesn’t have high precision can easily have the patient either result in a persistent vegetable state (PVS) or a corpse.Other than the manufacturing industries, the services sector is also very important to the Taiwanese economy as it makes up about 70% of the yearly total GDP of Taiwan.EVA AIR, ranking 1# on the ‘safest airlines worldwide’ list for several years.Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, one of the largest Taiwanese chain department stores. In English, the department store has a Japanese-sounding name, but is in fact a domestic brand.Miramar Cinemas, among the largest Taiwanese chain operation cinemas. It’s also a big shopping mall.Living Mall, a large shopping centre located in Taipei.Wang Steak, probably the largest chain steakhouse in Taiwan.Din Tai Fung, a very famous corporation of chain restaurants offering Taiwanese cuisines.The Taiwanese love reading, and this leads to the prosperity of local bookstores – Eslite, the largest Taiwanese chain bookstore.RT-Mart, the largest local chain shopping malls (not counting foreign brands such as Carrefour and Costco).A Fullon Hotel located in Tamsui, belonging to one of the largest Taiwanese corporations operating multiple 5-star hotels across the country.Another side of the said Fullon Hotel.Grand Hotel.CTBC, one of the largest Taiwanese banks.A CTBC branch (the skyscraper with greenish lighting that reads ‘CTBC BANK’ at the top) located in Los Angeles.Leofoo Village Theme Park, one of the largest Taiwanese amusement theme parks.Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village, another large (probably the largest) theme park in Taiwan. Unlike Leofoo Village Theme Park that introduces a lot of foreign and exotic elements, it mainly features the cultures of Taiwanese aborigines.At Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village.This is called ‘Maya Adventure’, one of the most famous attractions at Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village.National Taichung Theatre.National Theatre (in Taipei).National Concert Hall.National Palace Museum.Taipei the capital, the financial centre of Taiwan.Drone view of Taipei. Picture fetched from this YouTube video titled ‘I fly my drone in TAIWAN [4K]’[39][39][39][39]. SimCity 4 Formosa, anyone?One commercial district in Taipei.Kaohsiung, the second largest city in Taiwan.Taichung, the third largest, I guess? Or maybe not.Taichung skyline at night.Creeks in Taichung.They look like highways, well yeah they are.These look like highways too, well yeah they are.Three pictures of Taipei Train Station (including Qsquare), a complex public transportation hub as you can also take metro, high speed rail and buses from here.Taichung Train Station, the newer one.The Danhai Light Rail. It’s homegrown, meaning it’s designed and built by local companies. This means a lot to Taiwan because it’s the first time Taiwan’s managed to develop a domestic railroad-vehicle industry. Taiwan’s such a tiny island only slightly bigger than Israel, a country at this size will never make a firm that domestically manufactures any railroad vehicles be profitable as the domestic market is too small. That’s why Taiwan’s always imported instead of building when it comes to trains, trams, or metro. But the Danhai Light Rail has marked the beginning of a Taiwanese railroad-vehicle industry as the Government now has planned to make Taiwan a future exporter of vehicles moving on rails.One of the Danhai Light Rail trams in motion recorded in July, 2018. This is only a test-run as they haven’t been officially operating yet.The Danhai Light Rail has now been in operation since December 23, 2018.Central Park Station of Kaohsiung MRT.Kaohsiung circular light rail.Two pictures showing parts of Taipei MRT.The Puyuma Express. I personally think it’s the prettiest train we’ve got.The Taroko Express.The High Speed Rail. I prefer airplanes to be honest because I’m just very much into any vehicles that fly.Taoyuan International Airport. Its traffic flow is expanding, so more runways and terminals are being built.Airport MRT Express directly heading for Taoyuan International Airport.Songshan Airort (Taipei International Airport), located in the capital but much smaller than Taoyuan International Airport.Port of Kaohsiung, the largest port (I guess) in Taiwan.Headquarter of CPC, the largest petroleum, natural gas, and gasoline company in Taiwan.A CPC’s offshore platform. This one is for research purpose.A wind power station located in Penghu.A nuclear power station in Pingtung.Other than using turbines rotated by power of the wind to generate electricity, Taiwan has also developed an industry of renewable energy of other forms and such technologies have been in use. What’s in the picture above is a solar farm built on water in Tainan. As of January 2019, Google has announced to build its first data centre powered by renewable energy in Asia. The data centre will be located in Tainan, using solar technologies developed by Taiwanese companies. A data centre consumes a lot of electricity, especially one that belongs to a world-class tech corporation like Google, which would easily cover a couple of hundreds of land square metres, needing to store and process data from all of Asia, never taking a day off. Following Google, in the same month, Tokyo Electric Power Company (東京電力ホールディングス株式会社) has also announced to invest one hundred million US dollars in Taiwan’s renewable energy industry.A Google Data Centre in Denmark. So far, Google has had 16 data centres, 9 in the USA, 4 in Europe, 1 in South America, and 2 in Asia (Taiwan and Singapore). The one in Taiwan is in Changhua, and the largest Google Data Centre in Asia.A large desalination system developed and built by KTI, a Taiwanese company specialising in water treatment technology. This desalination system locates at a harbour in Yunlin County. I was actually quite surprised to learn that we needed something like this because I had always thought although Taiwan had literally zero valuable natural resources, at least we were blessed with abundance of fresh water. Well apparently I was wrong, that God actually treated us much worse than I thought (joke).Roads, bridges and remediated streams - paint a quiet countryside view.Street view: typical middle-class homes in the countryside.Street view: the quiet afternoon in a small town in the countryside. These houses (and those in the previous picture) have more modern design and look newer compared to the ones in the picture below.Street view: evening in a residential district in a countryside town. This district is the typical kind built in the ‘90s as it looks kinda old and you can see many windows are barred, which is extremely strange as Taiwan’s crime rates have always been very low even back in the day.Street view: a closer look.Onto agriculture, Taiwan’s a small country, so there isn’t much land to grow crops. As a result, Taiwan has to rely on technology innovation to boost the efficiency and productivity of its farms. In fact, Taiwan’s quite well-known for turning the agriculture industry - something that is usually considered primary and lowly - into a knowledge economy. The agriculture sector of Taiwan produces about 1.5% of Taiwan’s total yearly GDP.Taiwan’s agriculture industry relies heavily on innovation of technology. One of the most famous examples is YesHealth iFarm, a company that has developed a patent formula of antagonist micro-organisms, which boost production with low nitrate levels, and further develops into a system of growing vegetables in a water solution rather than soil. YesHealth iFarm’s going to have its first overseas branch in York, UK.A controlled environment hydroponic system developed by a fresh fruit and vegetable company in Changhua. A controlled environment hydroponic system is a type of precise-controlled environment agriculture greenhouses, and is among the most advanced modern agriculture technologies.A precise-controlled environment agriculture greenhouse system allows to massively grow plants that are rare under natural conditions, which would then significantly lower their prices. These plants in the picture here are grifola frondosa, a species of mushrooms. They are edible, and can help prevent cancers, but they’re expensive because they are uncommon even in their native habitats. The image above is from a locally developed precise-controlled environment greenhouse in Taichung.Taiwan’s agriculture economy isn’t just known for vegetables and fruits, but also flowering plants, such as those of the orchid family, which are good materials for perfume. In fact, ‘Kingdom of orchids’ refers to Taiwan.Every country has strength and weakness. While Taiwan is advanced in many areas, particularly those that are heavily technology, knowledge and science-oriented, Taiwan fares only moderately in some, where management and marketing are more determinant. Two typical examples are the finance and entertainment industries.What you’re looking at is a part of Nangang District, one of the most heavily invested regions in Taipei, and a lot of banks are located here. There’s nothing impressive about Taiwan’s finance industry because it’s just mediocre. Taiwan can learn a great deal from Singapore, whose finance industry is arguably ahead of the entire Asia.Other than the finance industry, the entertainment industry is another area that Taiwan should put more effort into. One of the most major parts of the entertainment industry is the gaming industry, in which Taiwan does relatively better than in the music and film industries, thanks to widespread international platforms such as Steam. The picture here is anime named ‘Xuan Yuan Sword Luminary’ (Japanese: 軒轅剣・蒼き曜) produced by TV TOKYO Corporation (株式會社東京電視). The anime is an adaptation of a video game named ‘Xuan-Yuan Sword: The Millennial Destiny‘ (軒轅劍外傳：滄之濤) released in 2004, developed by Softstar, a major Taiwanese video game company. TV TOKYO Corporation has obtained license from Softstar for development of the anime.Chu Yun (車芸), one of the main characters in the video game ‘Xuan-Yuan Sword: The Millennial Destiny’. ‘Chu’ is her surname, the pronunciation is the same as ‘居’. Her entire family were slaughtered when she was a baby, but even as a baby, she didn’t fully get away. The people that massacred her family chopped off her legs to compensate for not taking her life. In the picture here, you can see her legs are prostheses made of wood. The prostheses are a technology called ‘mu chia shu’ (木甲術), something much more advanced than even the 21st century robotics (bear in mind, the story of the game is set in a fictional version of the Spring and Autumn period). The wooden fox next to her is built using the same technology. Chu Yun dies in the end of the game, at an age of 14.The Legend of Sword and Fairy (仙劍奇俠傳), one of the very first Taiwanese video games, originally released in 1995 and developed by Softstar. This game was the first milestone of the Taiwanese gaming industry in that it was a tremendous success both in Taiwan and China. This game was so popular that probably every kid in Taiwan and China that had access to computer gaming back in the ‘90s had played or at least heard of it.The Seventh Seal: Resurrection of the Dark Lord, an RPG developed by Soft World, a major Taiwanese video game company. This game was released in 2002. In general, Soft World’s games aren’t as popular as Softstar’s, but they still have quite a large fanbase.The era of the ‘90s was the booming period of Taiwan’s gaming industry because at the time a good number of Taiwan’s videogame companies tried to do as many things as possible. The console here, named Super A’Can, has been the first TV gaming console that Taiwan’s gaming industry has developed, by Funtech Entertainment Corporation and released in 1995. Owing to scarcity of the number of videogames released for this console and a lack of 3D support, along with a high price, Super A’Can failed to compete with Sony’s PlayStation and eventually led the company into bankruptcy. Funtech Entertainment Corporation now belongs to UMC (United Microelectroincs Corporation), a Taiwanese semiconductor company.‘Son of Evil’, an RPG game developed by Funtech Entertainment Corp and released for Super A’Can.Taiwan’s music industry mostly only caters for Chinese-speaking markets, and it has been so for decades. Taiwan is without a doubt the pop-culture icon in the domain of Chinese-speaking countries, but not so much outside of it.Mayday is a relatively more internationally-focusing band in comparison with other bands and singers originated in Taiwan. In early January 2019, they have just finished their 10th concert tour, which started from March 2017. They performed in multiple major cities on the tour, including Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Vancouver, Toronto, Chicago, Huston, New York, Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney, Paris and London. 13 countries and 53 cities in total.The film industry in Taiwan is pretty much in the same boat with the music industry, and it also mostly just aims at Chinese-speaking markets, although in recent years, there has been a boom for new movies in both quantity and quality. The two movies in the picture here hit the cinema in 2011.‘Seediq Bale’ (賽德克巴萊) is a movie about Taiwanese aboriginals rebelling against the Japanese invaders.This is from the trailer of a horror film called ‘The Devil Fish’ (人面魚. The English translation sounds kind of funny), hitting the cinema in November 2018. The movie is based on quite a few urban legends in Taiwan. I’m sorry, I should have warned you about this picture.Wake Up, a 2015 Taiwanese television series, a medical drama that received largely positive reviews, recommended even by real physicians.The World Between Us, a 2019 Taiwanese drama television series. This drama may sound like a romantic one, but it isn’t. The story begins with a mass murder, centers around the death penalty, psychology and emotions of both the murderer’s and victims’ family, clashes between wanting to revenge and growing sympathy for those who call the offender ‘son’ and ‘brother’ (“哥哥”), and conflicts between justice and human rights. IMDB has given this drama 9.2 out of 10.Nowhere Man, the first Taiwanese drama to be aired (October 31, 2019) on Netflix. Including Nowhere Man, there have been 3 Taiwanese dramas scheduled to be aired on Netflix; the other two are Triad Princess (December 6, 2019) and The Ghost Bride (January 2020). Since Netflix is worldwide popular, not restricted to Chinese-speaking regions, I think we can say Taiwanese dramas have formally entered the international market.The three major festivals and their awards that the entertainment industries in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and Singapore hold dear, namely the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards (金馬獎), the Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎) and the Golden Bell Awards (金鐘獎), were all founded and are held by Taiwan. This picture shows actors and actresses attending the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards.The Golden Melody Awards, giving prizes to the best singers, artists and bands of the year.The Golden Bell Awards, an annual Taiwanese television production award, attracting actors, actresses and directors from all Chinese-speaking regions.The fact that Taiwan’s the pop culture centre of all Chinese-speaking societies also attracts talented foreigners to come and develop their careers here. Leehom Wang (left) is a Taiwanese-American singer. Stefanie Sun (middle), a singer from Singapore. Wayne Lim (right), also a Singaporean singer, crazy popular.Besides attracting foreign talents to work in Taiwan’s entertainment industry, there are also Taiwanese that work in the entertainment industries in other countries, like Tzuyu and Ang Lee (pic below). Of course you know Tzuyu. The whole planet knows her. She’s from Tainan, a major city in Southern Taiwan. I have heard more than a few times that people say she has very typical “Tainan girl” looks. Guess what, I kinda agree.Ang Lee, he’s also from Tainan (but was born in Pingtung). He’s a director, working in America’s film industry, and has obtained the Academy Award for Best Directing twice, in 2006 and 2013. In the picture above, he was apparently given another award.Ang Lee won the Academy Award for Best Directing for these two films of his – Life of Pi (left) and Brokeback Mountain (right).Taiwan used to be a major animated film contractor in the ‘90s, which means a lot of name-brand animated film companies had the drawing and animation work of their animated films done in Taiwan, including many famous Disney films, so it isn’t surprising at all that the puppy in the rain in the picture above is CGI done by a Taiwanese animation studio for its own film. This picture is fetched from the studio’s short film called ‘A Dog’s Life’, in which some scenes are CGI, some are regular animation (2D).Another CGI scene in ‘A Dog’s Life’, isn’t it beautiful?The CGI of Netflix’s famous ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ TV series is done by a Taiwanese studio (CGCG Inc.). The studio has won quite a few Annie Awards for it.CGCG Inc. also participated in production of ‘Star Wars: Resistance’ and ‘Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea’.‘On Happiness Road’ (幸福路上) is the most recent animated film produced by Taiwanese studios, and has won ‘Award for Best Animated Feature Film’ at Tokyo Anime Award Festival (東京アニメアワード) last year (2018). While I believe winning a major award which has a long history of being won by Miyazaki Hayao’s films, at a major anime festival, in a major anime-producing country, means something, as an ordinary movie watcher however, I have to say that’s exactly the problem of Taiwan’s anime industry because actually ‘On Happiness Road’ sold terribly. It isn’t a secret that Taiwanese anime producers refuse to learn from Disney and Japanese anime, criticising them being ‘commercial and customer-serving’, so the result is anime films from Taiwan win awards, but nobody cares because they don’t have much entertainment value, hell they aren’t even interesting. I think it’s time that Taiwanese anime producers got off from their ‘artist’ high horse and recognised the fact that anime from America and Japan are a result of natural selection of the market, that they may not win a major prize, but they sell, which is the most important thing since this isn’t about art and glory, but about the industry and money. This is why I have higher regard for the two animated films below, and not for ‘On Happiness Road’ (Let me clear myself a little bit: I watched ‘On Happiness Road’, and I really liked it. This film isn’t what it looks like. It’s clearly for adults. What this film tries to convey is deep and reflects a lot of issues that we’re facing even today. The story has fun moments that would make you burst into laughter, but there are also parts that are really sad. ‘On Happiness Road’ is one of those great films that would linger in your heart long, even years after you have watched it for the first time on a random Saturday night. I’m not surprised at all that this film has won appreciation of Japanese film critics and been given major awards in both Japan and Germany. It even has been in theatres in France, with blue-ray disks now released in the European market. ‘On Happiness Road’ has set a high bar for Taiwanese animated films in terms of scripts, content, smoothness and expressiveness of animations, but commercially – let’s face it - it’s a failure. It even isn’t profitable.)‘Implosion: ZERO DAY’ (聚爆：第零日) is an animated film based on the video game of the same name. Both of the film and video game are developed by Rayark. The film was originally planned to hit the cinema in summer 2018, but has been postponed. You can watch the trailer here[40][40][40][40].‘Mayfly Island’ (蜉蝣之島), originally named as ‘Kraft’ (最後的卡夫特), is an animated film scheduled to hit the theatre in 2020. The poster may remind some people of ‘Howl's Moving Castle’, but they’re completely different things, having totally different world backgrounds, settings and themes. The only similarity between them is they both feature what we would call ‘illegal structures’ in real life, like that ship-looking thing behind the boy in the poster, and the castle of Howl’s. Unlike ‘Implosion: ZERO DAY’, there hasn’t been any trailer of ‘Mayfly Island’, and all the videos about this film leaked on the Internet are just samples (樣片), meaning they’re short and a lot of details regarding the art have been removed.Similar to the entertainment industry, the garment industry (including clothing and personal accessories) is also a field that Taiwan should invest more money and talents in. NET is one of the very few Taiwanese brands of clothing.Watches are very representative personal accessories. ATOP (left) is the only Taiwanese watch brand that I know that designs and develops its own clockwork (the right picture; watch clockwork is also known as ‘movements’. The clockwork here in the picture is not from ATOP). The ability to develop own clockwork is very important for a watch manufacturer. Major watch brands such as Seiko, Citizen, Casio, Tissot, Oris, Rolex and etc, all develop clockwork for themselves. ATOP watches are not expensive, their prices usually ranging between USD 200 - 500, but they’re technically much more valuable than those Taiwanese watch brands that use some China-made cheap crappy clones of Swiss clockwork and try to sell for a thousand bucks just because some diamonds are put on them.Like the garment industry, the cosmetic industry of Taiwan could use more investment and talents as there aren’t many cosmetic brands from Taiwan. My Beauty Diary (left) is a mid-range Taiwanese brand that seems to have occupied many young Chinese ladies’ vanities. St. Clare (right) is an expensive brand, whose products are viewed as on a par with those from European and Japanese cosmetic brands. St. Clare is a popular brand in Taiwan, but I haven’t seen it in China.Certainly, there are some areas that Taiwan should put a lot of more effort into, such as the entertainment and garment industries, but it doesn’t change the fact that Taiwan is no doubt a developed economy and technologically advanced. Some other things alongside economy and technology I’d like to add: freedom of the press and forest coverage rate. High freedom of the press indicates more powerful media, functioning not only as a highly efficient force to monitor the Government, but also as a means where different perspectives and opinions can be spoken and heard by the masses, which as a result, would naturally lead to a government of less corruption, and a more forward-thinking and open-minded society. A developed country, in my own thought, ought to have high freedom of the press; look at those Nordic countries! The forest coverage rate tells us how ‘green’ a country is. Some countries are naturally greener than others due to different terrains. Taiwan’s getting greener and greener! Having gone through a lot to realise the importance of environmental protection, we the Taiwanese have learnt to appreciate the beauty of the island and what she has given to us. The island is our mother. After years of environmental preservation, the forest coverage rate of Taiwan has improved significantly.Taiwan receives a score of 25 (the lower the better) on Freedom of the Press 2017, ranking ahead of Japan (27), South Korea (34), Hong Kong (42), China (87) and North Korea (98). Scores of other major countries: America (23), Canada (18), France (26), Britain (25), Germany (20) and Italy (31).Taiwan scored 7.73 for the Democracy Index in 2018, ranking 32, between Belgium (31) and Italy (33). Overall, in the developed European regions, the country that is institutionally the most similar to Taiwan in a meaningful way is France, which scored 7.80, ranking 29.Taiwan is the only country built based on a model of separation of five powers (五權分立); other countries adopt a model of separation of three powers, such as the United States of America. The philosophy to establish examination affairs as an independent power off of the Executive Yuan is that founders of this country believe civil service examinations being a just and open competition, political influences and intervention should be as minimalized as possible.Taiwan (left) and France (right) are both semi-presidentialism. I don’t necessarily think that a parliamentary system would serve Taiwan better, but I do think we lack certain good customs that you can find in the French semi-presidentialism; for example, a tradition of alternation when a minority cabinet is formed.Alternation only happened once in the history of the Taiwanese government. In the first term of Shui-Bian Chen (left) as head of state, he appointed Fei Tang (the guy in the middle in the right picture), who was a member of the largest oppositional party, as head of government. Fei Tang quit the position 4 months after being appointed.In a country that is a presidential system, like the US, the president is the head of state and owns predominant power over all the other cabinet members. In a parliamentary system, like the UK, it’s the head of government (the Prime Minister) that is given actual power by the constitution, while the head of state (the monarch) is more like a symbolic position. In Taiwan, a semi-presidential system, actual power is shared by both the head of state and the head of government, each confines the other in their own dominant aspects. In Taiwan’s constitution, the position of the head of government is called “President of the Executive Yuan” (行政院院長).In the French semi-presidential system, when a minority cabinet is formed, usually the president would exert his/her right of dissolution of parliament, and determine if the government should enter cohabitation based on the results of reelection of the parliament. In the Taiwanese semi-presidential system, the constitution regulates the president’s right of dissolution of parliament. The president of Taiwan can dissolute parliament only when the head of government resigns in response to the vote of no confidence passed by parliament. In a presidential system, the head of state can’t dissolute parliament. Picture above was captured in Beidou, Changhua County.The semi-presidential system has characteristics of both of the presidential and parliamentary systems. In the presidential system, parliament has no interrogating power to question any members of the cabinet, including the president, whereas in the parliamentary system, the actual power holder (the Prime Minister) being interrogated in parliament is a common scene. In the Taiwanese semi-presidential system, legislators are entitled by the constitution to interrogate the cabinet, but not the president. This is partly why the head of government (President of the Executive Yuan) has the final say in validating (by countersign) enactment of bills because once enacted, bills go from the domain of the legislative power into the domain of the executive power, and that’s where liability of the President of the Executive Yuan lies. Image here is Chao-Shiuan Liu, the President of the Executive Yuan from May 2008 to September 2009.In the semi-presidential system of Taiwan, the head of government is entitled by the constitution to nominate his vice-president and all his ministers. The picture above shows some of the ministers sitting in a row answering questions from the press.The yuan sitting is the highest decision-making unit of the Executive Yuan and holds the highest executive power in all the cabinet. Premier of the sitting is the President of the Executive Yuan himself. The constitution of Taiwan gives the head of state no say in this unit. Various things have to be discussed at the sitting of the Executive Yuan before final decisions are made and announced by the president of Taiwan. These things include enforcement of martial law, declaration of war against other countries, and signing treaties with other states.The forest coverage rate of Taiwan is currently at 60.71% as of the data reported in 2016. Lower than Japan (67%), but higher than Slovenia (60.1%), Sweden (58%), Germany (31.7%), Britain (11.76%), France (30.95%) and Italy (35%). The picture was taken in Ilan, Taiwan.Mugumuyu in Hualien County.A part of Taroko National Park, it’s a fascinating experience to drive through the long, narrow, greenish canyon.At the first glance, it may look like somewhere in the Amazon rainforest, but this is actually in Tainan. Tainan has one of the largest wetland nature reserves in Taiwan.Another large wetland nature reserve, in Tamsui.Orchid Island is an island off the southeastern coast of Taiwan, administratively belongs to Taitung County, and is the only place where you can see tropical (not ‘subtropical’!) Forests in the country. The man in the right picture is Hazen Audel, starring in National Geographic Channel’s ‘Primal Survivor’ series. The series brought him to Orchid Island, in the picture he was hunting aquatic animals using Yami people’s techniques. The Yami people are the indigenous people native to Orchid Island.At the weekend, leave your home in Taipei, visit the wilds in Taiwan, climb a short mountain below 500m, you’ll be greeted with a typical scenario of subtropical forests.Swinhoe’s pheasants are habitants commonly seen in Taiwan’s low-altitude forests. They’re found only in Taiwan (hence also known as the ‘Taiwan blue pheasant’), named after Robert Swinhoe in 1862, a British naturalist, yet actually the first word record of this species dates back to 1753, by a Chinese settler, who described the pheasants as ‘difficult to tame’, suggesting a nature very different from that of domestic animals and poultry although the locals (Taiwanese aboriginals) had tried to tame them.Taiwan is a mountainous country, between 500m – 2,000m of altitude, the terrains of Taiwan are covered with temperate vegetation, forming rampant and beautiful temperate forests, home of quite a lot of species.Taiwan is an island, the lack of influence from outside world for million years helps species on the island evolve into their own unique branches. The Formosan black bear is one of the many endemic species of Taiwan, the largest native mammal in the country.The Formosan sika deer, also an endemic species of Taiwan, as suggested by the name.The leopard cat is one of the only two large species of felidae native to Taiwan. The other is the Formosan clouded leopard (picture below), but due to our greed for the value of their fur, the Formosan clouded leopards have become extinct, with the last record of a wild individual in 1983, a dead cub. We’re not going to make the same mistake with leopard cats or any other species in Taiwan again.Specimens of the Formosan clouded leopard at National Taiwan Museum, preserved since the Japanese ruling era.The so-called ‘Formosan clouded leopards’ bred in various major zoos in Taiwan that you can see today are not real Formosan clouded leopards. Instead, they’re foreign species, most commonly the Sudan clouded leopard (the picture here). Pay a visit to National Taiwan Museum, those cold, soulless specimens are the only chance that you can see what a real Formosan clouded leopard looks like. How pathetic that we have exploited what the island of Taiwan has offered and taken it for granted, annihilating an entire species by our own hand. Modern Taiwan has learnt a hard lesson with it, having put a lot of effort into environmental and animal protection since the ‘90s, that’s the right path.Taiwan currently has at least 9 national parks and 57 conservation zones set for habitats and species protection. The Chinese white dolphin is a dolphin species whose habitats range southward from oceanic areas surrounding Taiwan to Southeast Asia and Oceania. Taiwan’s planning a conservation zone for the Chinese white dolphins west off the coast of Miaoli, Taichung, Changhua and Yunlin, a total area of 763 square kilometres. Fishing and marine development in this area will have to meet special regulations.Being an island, Taiwan naturally has abundant ocean resources, and some are very good for tourism. The picture above (which I obtained from a travel agency website) features Ching-shui Cliffs, on the east coast of Taiwan. It’s an ideal place for whale watching.Another shot of Ching-shui cliffs. Credit: this website[41][41][41][41].Longdong Bay, northeast coast. Picture from here[42][42][42][42].Baisha Bay, in New Taipei City. Taiwan’s a country where you have access to both high mountains and beautiful seaside within arm’s reach.Longpan Park, Pingtung.Double-heart of Stacked Stones, Penghu. It’s a well-preserved ancient fish trap made by stacking stones to form a trap that resembles a flying heart.A lighthouse near the Aimen Beach, also in Penghu.Aowanda, Nanto County, one of the largest woods that are home of maples.Alishan in autumn.Above 3,000m of altitude, the whole island of Taiwan is covered with coniferous vegetation, breeding wide areas of coniferous forests.If you are keen on mountain climbing and enjoy those Taiwanese mountains higher than 3,000m, you must have been familiar with this kind of woods in the two pictures here. It’s the same type of woods that you see in Scandinavia.Cloud sea and the sun in the morning, somewhere in Nantou.Two pictures of Mt. Sylvania, located in Miaoli; the mountain is referred to as ‘Papa-Waqa’ by the Atayal people, and ‘Kapatalayan’ by the Sai-Siat people.Mount Hehuan, snowfall in January, 2010.Yushan, or Mount Jade, the highest mountain in Taiwan, at 3,952m. It’s also the highest mountain in East Asia if you don’t count those in Mongolia and Western China (including Northwestern and Southwestern China). Taiwan has 98 mountains over 3,000m in height.Many mountains have urban legends, Yushan is no exception. The most widespread urban legend about Yushan stems from unverified sighting reports of this thing we call ‘Yushan hsiao fei hsia’ (玉山小飛俠), literally translated as ‘Yushan Peter Pan’ in English, called so because of its appearance – yellow raincoat and a pointy hat. They always appear in a group of three, standing silently near mountain trails when the woods start to get cold and foggy, usually seen by mountain climbers, who once see them, will not be able to resist the idea of following them. Most mountain climbers that follow them are found dead days after by other hikers or rescue teams, usually having fallen off a high cliff, but there are also some that survive to tell people their stories. In this urban legend, these mysterious, humanlike figures are thought to be connected with a large number of death accidents on Yushan.And, Taiwan’s been helping people in need worldwide for a long time!The Tzu Chi Foundation. A Taiwan-based Buddhist organisation that helps promote education, better public health, provide clothes and shelters, eliminate famine in developing countries.Taiwan is a country that values human rights and believes in equality. February 2019, with the law for same-sex marriage drafted, Taiwan’s is in the process of becoming the first Asian state to legalise same-sex marriage. Homosexuality is neither sexual inversion like necrophilia, nor sexual orientation that fundamentally causes harm like pedophilia. It’s a minority, but just as normal as heterosexuality. Homosexual individuals should deserve the right to build a family, to take the responsibility of being a parent and raising children, to live life to the fullest just like all we do. I feel Taiwan has made a huge progress.May 2019, Taiwan legalised same-sex marriage. But for some very weird reason, a lot of netizens and Quorans seem to have made this whole thing be like an X-file because there are a lot of versions. One version says legalisation of same-sex marriage didn’t pass parliament, instead, it was president’s order. Another version says parliament disobeyed Taiwanese people’s opinions because in the referendum held in November last year, legalisation of same-sex marriage was actually voted against and didn’t pass. Well, so Mulder and Scully are here to help. They are X-file experts.After 10 seconds of Google search, Mulder and Scully say case closed (yeah they know Mandarin). This must have been the only case where Scully is right that it ain’t X-file. Apparently, in the referendum, people voted against ‘legalising same-sex marriage under the Civil Code’, but people actually accepted it when the legalisation was through a non-Civil Code. So the conclusion: first, legalisation of same-sex marriage was through parliament; second, the Civil Code provides more thorough protection for civil rights than a non-Civil Code does, but accepting protection of rights of same-sex couples outside of the Civil Code is already one giant leap for an East Asian society and a good start. The Taiwanese society is progressive, even Judicial Interpretation No. 748[43][43][43][43] has concluded prohibiting same-sex couples from marital rights violates constitutional protection for right of equality. We are not ‘allowing’ same-sex couples to form marriage. We are ‘returning’ marital rights back to them.With all the evidence presented be it just some metric figures or occurrences that have happened or events that are currently ongoing, Taiwan is positively a developed country - it seriously cannot be anything else, for what Taiwan's capable of is far too much for an emerging state.*Additional Content:These are a little bit off-topic but I feel inclined to address some very important facts about the ownership (sovereignty) of the island of Taiwan and archipelago of Penghu not belonging to the Republic of China, which then leading to another fact, that there’s no legal stance for the People’s Republic of China to lay any claims on Taiwan and Penghu, and hence the United States of America has considered Taiwan’s status as undetermined.The Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration, the Treaty of Taipei, and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender have been the only four written documents where the sovereignty of the island of Taiwan and archipelago of Penghu may have been mentioned to belong to, or to be returned to the Republic of China. While there’s no denying that they have referred to such an issue, these materials have had no legal effect when it comes to sovereignty transferring of a territory.1. The Cairo Declaration -(1) Instead of being a treaty or an executive agreement, the Cairo Declaration (year 1943) has only been a press communiqué, and a statement of intention at best, having no legal effect, and therefore has had no authority to invalidate the Treaty of Shimonoseki (year 1895), by which the sovereignty of the island of Taiwan and archipelago of Penghu has been transferred to Japan.(2) No countries have signed on the Cairo Declaration.(3) The yearly governmental publication ‘Treaties in Force’, published by United States Department of State, has never included the Cairo Declaration.(4) Due to the Cairo Declaration’s lacking legal effect, the sovereignty of the island of Taiwan and archipelago of Penghu has continued to be legally in the hands of Japan until 1952 after the Treaty of San Francisco has come into effect. The Republic of China has only been governing Taiwan and Penghu under the name of ‘military occupation’ (mandate) authorised by General Order No. 1, signed in and coming into effect since 1945. Sovereignty and governing have always been two separate concepts.2. The Potsdam Declaration -(1) The only part of the Potsdam Declaration ever mentioning the sovereignty of Taiwan and Penghu has been the Cairo Declaration, as the Cairo Declaration’s been included in it.(2) Just like the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration too has only been a statement of intention. ‘United States Treaties and Other International Agreements Cumulative Index 1776-1949’, originally published in 1975, has categorized all of the text materials it’s collected into 5 kinds based on their legal effect: the TS (Treaty Series), EAS (Executive Agreement Series), TIAS (Treaties and Other International Acts Series), UST (United States Treaties) and AD (Additional Documents). The TS, EAS, TIAS and UST represent ‘text materials that have legal effect’ while documents having no legal effect are all put into the AD. Both of the Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Declaration have been sorted into the AD since the very beginning.3. The Treaty of Taipei -(1) The Treaty of Taipei, signed by Japan and the Republic of China in 1952, and coming into effect on the 5th, August in the same year, has been legally questionable because it's contradicted the Treaty of San Francisco, coming into effect on the 28th, April, 1952. The Treaty of San Francisco’s regulated Japan’s authority to sign any legal documents with other countries following it by stating any legal documents required to be signed by Japan to come into effect cannot contradict the Treaty of San Francisco. The content of the Treaty of Taipei has had conflicts with the Treaty of San Francisco, leading to its deniable validity.(2) Japan’s renounced the sovereignty of the island of Taiwan and archipelago of Penghu in the Treaty of San Francisco. Hence, any parts (if there’s any) of the Treaty of Taipei stating Japan would return the island of Taiwan and archipelago of Penghu to the Republic of China will have ended up illegal, as Japan has had no sovereignty over the Taiwanese isles ever since the Treaty of San Francisco coming into effect, leaving Japan no authority to make any decisions on such an issue.(3) On the 29th, September, 1972, Japan’s renounced its diplomatic relation with the Republic of China and turned to the People’s Republic of China. Shortly following this event, Japan has declared void of the Treaty of Taipei.4. The Japanese Instrument of Surrender -The Instrument of Surrender has only been a truce, a form of legal documents used to formally declare the end of the warfare between or among countries. This is the only function of a truce, and hence it’s out of question that a truce has natively never had the authority of sovereignty transferring of a territory. The transferring of the sovereignty of a territory can only be legally achieved through treaties or agreements. Transactions of the Senate of the State of Japan (date: 15th/03/1961) have written, as transcribing Zentaro Kosaka’s (小坂善太郎) original words, who’s been Japan’s Foreign Minister at the time, “… however, what the Instrument of Surrender represents is only a pact of a truce, and therefore it is incapable of having binding force regarding any decisions or arrangement concerning the sovereignty of a territory”. (original text in Japanese: しかし、これは降伏文書というものは、休戦協定の性格を有するものでありまして、領土的処理を行ない得ない性質のものであるということを申し上げたのであります。)These help explain why the United States of America’s always considered Taiwan’s status as undetermined, and how on earth it has got to enact Taiwan Relations Act, continually operating weaponry communication with Taiwan based on such an act while recognising the People’s Republic of China as the sole legitimate representative of China. In the world of the law, the sovereignty of the island of Taiwan and archipelago of Penghu hasn’t been owned by any political entities. The Republic of China’s merely governing Taiwan in the name of military mandate since the very beginning. Let’s see how Kai-shek Chiang has put it.Taiwan’s Academia Historica (directly belonging to Office of the President, ROC) has revealed a letter written by Chiang to Cheng Chen, the Governor of Taiwan Province, Vice President and Premier of the Republic of China; it’s been year 1949, and in the letter, it says, ‘Taiwan is merely a mandate [the green part] of the Republic of China before a Treaty with Japan declares it is not. How could you publicly state Taiwan would serve as the last resort for the Republic of China to wipe the communists out of the country, and to liberate our people suffering under communism? Your statement was laughable to anybody that had learnt a thing or two about Taiwan’s legal status, which was, and still is merely a mandate, be they foreign or not.’In the world of the law, Taiwan is not China and has nothing to do with China, even if it’s officially called the Republic of China. In the world of the law, Taiwan has had no government ever since its sovereignty was renounced by the Empire of Japan in 1952. It’s been 66 years as I’m writing this. For 66 years already, Taiwan has had no government from the perspectives of the law, as no one in the world but the Taiwanese themselves has been legally qualified to obtain the ownership (sovereignty) of the island of Taiwan and archipelago of Penghu after the Empire of Japan. The Taiwanese haven’t been ready to do it, though. They have no reason to do it, either, for everything is still fine and quite acceptable currently. A military invasion from China however, would be a solid reason for the Taiwanese to finally pick up the sovereignty of Taiwan, which has been waiting for them to take for so long.Again, these help explain why, before a Republic of Taiwan will be built, the United States of America has always considered Taiwan’s status as undetermined and unsettled. The United States of America has intentionally left some grey zone to manipulate when signing the Three Joint Communiqués with the People’s Republic of China. In the Shanghai Communiqués (year 1972), it says -‘The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.’The grey zone is as follows –1. ‘The United States’ isn’t even the formal name of America to begin with. The formal name should be ‘the United States of America’. This already shows how diplomatically informal the piece of Communiqué is.2. ‘Acknowledge’ has very different meanings depending on the contexts. It doesn’t necessarily mean ‘recognise’; instead, it can mean ‘having knowledge of’, which is semantically a synonym of ‘knowing’. Knowing doesn’t mean agreement or recognition. In international legal documents, when you do formally recognise something, you use the word ‘recognise’ straight. You don’t make use of the word ‘acknowledge’ as it causes ambiguity, unless you intend to cause ambiguity.3. ‘All Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait’, another ambiguity here. The word ‘Chinese’, does it refer to citizenship or something else? If it refers to citizenship, there’s no Chinese on Taiwan because the Republic of China doesn’t possess the sovereignty of Taiwan. It has no people, legally speaking. Hence, there’s only one side of the Taiwan Strait inhabited by the Chinese.Therefore, basically, what the United States of America states in the Shanghai Communiqué, is this informal language with a grant of salt -‘Me know you Chinese people of the PRC think there’s only one China, and that you think Taiwan’s a part of China. I won’t challenge your stance (not saying I agree though). I just want you to deal with yourself peacefully.’As a result, the position of the United States regarding Taiwan’s legal status, as clarified in the ‘China/Taiwan: Evolution of the "One China" Policy’ report of the Congressional Research Service (date: July 9, 2007), is summed up in five points -1. The United States did not explicitly state the sovereign status of Taiwan in the three US-PRC Joint Communiques of 1972, 1979, and 1982.2. The United States "acknowledged" the "One China" position of both sides of the Taiwan Strait.3. US policy has not recognized the PRC's sovereignty over Taiwan.4. US policy has not recognized Taiwan as a sovereign country.5. US policy has considered Taiwan's status as undetermined. U.S. policy has considered Taiwan's status as unsettled.These positions remained unchanged in a 2013 report of the Congressional Research Service. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) offers Congress research and analysis on all current and emerging issues of national policy. It offers timely and confidential assistance to all Members and committees that request it, limited only by CRS’s resources and the requirements for balance, nonpartisanship and accuracy. CRS makes no legislative or other policy recommendations to Congress; its responsibility is to ensure that Members of the House and Senate have available the best possible information and analysis on which to base the policy decisions the American people have elected them to make. In all its work, CRS analysts are governed by requirements for confidentiality, timeliness, accuracy, objectivity, balance, and nonpartisanship.I hope my answer helps you understand Taiwan better. Thank you for reading this far.*About the references (footnotes):There’s a lot of information in this answer and I can’t possibly put all their sources in the answer in just a few hours, but I will add them gradually. However, your use of reverse image search is also recommended when I haven’t put the references. Google search using keywords (in English or Mandarin, or both) is welcome, too. My apology for the inconvenience.Footnotes[1] Earl B. Hunt - Wikipedia[1] Earl B. Hunt - Wikipedia[1] Earl B. Hunt - Wikipedia[1] Earl B. Hunt - Wikipedia[2] Human Intelligence[2] Human Intelligence[2] Human Intelligence[2] Human Intelligence[3] A century of trends in adult human height[3] A century of trends in adult human height[3] A century of trends in adult human height[3] A century of trends in adult human height[4] The g‐factor of international cognitive ability comparisons: the homogeneity of results in PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and IQ‐tests across nations[4] The g‐factor of international cognitive ability comparisons: the homogeneity of results in PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and IQ‐tests across nations[4] The g‐factor of international cognitive ability comparisons: the homogeneity of results in PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and IQ‐tests across nations[4] The g‐factor of international cognitive ability comparisons: the homogeneity of results in PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and IQ‐tests across nations[5] 大麥克指數：台幣相對美元低估逾 4 成，遠比人民幣嚴重[5] 大麥克指數：台幣相對美元低估逾 4 成，遠比人民幣嚴重[5] 大麥克指數：台幣相對美元低估逾 4 成，遠比人民幣嚴重[5] 大麥克指數：台幣相對美元低估逾 4 成，遠比人民幣嚴重[6] Report for Selected Countries and Subjects[6] Report for Selected Countries and Subjects[6] Report for Selected Countries and Subjects[6] Report for Selected Countries and Subjects[7] High-Entropy Alloys - Fundamentals and Applications | Michael C. Gao | Springer[7] High-Entropy Alloys - Fundamentals and Applications | Michael C. Gao | Springer[7] High-Entropy Alloys - Fundamentals and Applications | Michael C. Gao | Springer[7] High-Entropy Alloys - Fundamentals and Applications | Michael C. Gao | Springer[8] High-Entropy Alloys[8] High-Entropy Alloys[8] High-Entropy Alloys[8] High-Entropy Alloys[9] 行政院性別平等會-性別統計資料庫[9] 行政院性別平等會-性別統計資料庫[9] 行政院性別平等會-性別統計資料庫[9] 行政院性別平等會-性別統計資料庫[10] Innolux 1.4" round flexible OLED[10] Innolux 1.4" round flexible OLED[10] Innolux 1.4" round flexible OLED[10] Innolux 1.4" round flexible OLED[11] AUO shows Foldable AMOLED, Conformable Plastic LCD, Bezel-less displays and 240Hz Monitor[11] AUO shows Foldable AMOLED, Conformable Plastic LCD, Bezel-less displays and 240Hz Monitor[11] AUO shows Foldable AMOLED, Conformable Plastic LCD, Bezel-less displays and 240Hz Monitor[11] AUO shows Foldable AMOLED, Conformable Plastic LCD, Bezel-less displays and 240Hz Monitor[12] AUO AMOLED technologies at SID 2018[12] AUO AMOLED technologies at SID 2018[12] AUO AMOLED technologies at SID 2018[12] AUO AMOLED technologies at SID 2018[13] Acer XR341CK - Perfection in a monitor?[13] Acer XR341CK - Perfection in a monitor?[13] Acer XR341CK - Perfection in a monitor?[13] Acer XR341CK - Perfection in a monitor?[14] Taiwan is the World’s Fourth-Largest Exporter of Machine Tools[14] Taiwan is the World’s Fourth-Largest Exporter of Machine Tools[14] Taiwan is the World’s Fourth-Largest Exporter of Machine Tools[14] Taiwan is the World’s Fourth-Largest Exporter of Machine Tools[15] 機械零組件 工具機明日之星 - 產業特刊[15] 機械零組件 工具機明日之星 - 產業特刊[15] 機械零組件 工具機明日之星 - 產業特刊[15] 機械零組件 工具機明日之星 - 產業特刊[16] 工研院院士朱志洋：認真、執著、堅持 成就全球第三大工具機集團 | 聯合新聞網[16] 工研院院士朱志洋：認真、執著、堅持 成就全球第三大工具機集團 | 聯合新聞網[16] 工研院院士朱志洋：認真、執著、堅持 成就全球第三大工具機集團 | 聯合新聞網[16] 工研院院士朱志洋：認真、執著、堅持 成就全球第三大工具機集團 | 聯合新聞網[17] 友嘉 拚航太工具機廠落戶台灣 - Taiwan Smart Machinery[17] 友嘉 拚航太工具機廠落戶台灣 - Taiwan Smart Machinery[17] 友嘉 拚航太工具機廠落戶台灣 - Taiwan Smart Machinery[17] 友嘉 拚航太工具機廠落戶台灣 - Taiwan Smart Machinery[18] AD5L AMS 高速深孔加工機 180秒[18] AD5L AMS 高速深孔加工機 180秒[18] AD5L AMS 高速深孔加工機 180秒[18] AD5L AMS 高速深孔加工機 180秒[19] 突破奈米極限！ 台灣技術獲國際肯定 - 生活 - 自由時報電子報[19] 突破奈米極限！ 台灣技術獲國際肯定 - 生活 - 自由時報電子報[19] 突破奈米極限！ 台灣技術獲國際肯定 - 生活 - 自由時報電子報[19] 突破奈米極限！ 台灣技術獲國際肯定 - 生活 - 自由時報電子報[20] Foxconn - Wikipedia[20] Foxconn - Wikipedia[20] Foxconn - Wikipedia[20] Foxconn - Wikipedia[21] 發現材料界超人 清大學者躍國際期刊 - 科技[21] 發現材料界超人 清大學者躍國際期刊 - 科技[21] 發現材料界超人 清大學者躍國際期刊 - 科技[21] 發現材料界超人 清大學者躍國際期刊 - 科技[22] Breakthrough applications of high-entropy materials | Journal of Materials Research | Cambridge Core[22] Breakthrough applications of high-entropy materials | Journal of Materials Research | Cambridge Core[22] Breakthrough applications of high-entropy materials | Journal of Materials Research | Cambridge Core[22] Breakthrough applications of high-entropy materials | Journal of Materials Research | Cambridge Core[23] The Global Competitiveness Report 2018[23] The Global Competitiveness Report 2018[23] The Global Competitiveness Report 2018[23] The Global Competitiveness Report 2018[24] Engineered Ceramics[24] Engineered Ceramics[24] Engineered Ceramics[24] Engineered Ceramics[25] Refractory high-entropy alloys[25] Refractory high-entropy alloys[25] Refractory high-entropy alloys[25] Refractory high-entropy alloys[26] 賀！材料系高熵合金研究計畫團隊榮獲2017未來科技展-未來科技突破獎 - 國立台灣大學材料科學與工程學系暨研究所[26] 賀！材料系高熵合金研究計畫團隊榮獲2017未來科技展-未來科技突破獎 - 國立台灣大學材料科學與工程學系暨研究所[26] 賀！材料系高熵合金研究計畫團隊榮獲2017未來科技展-未來科技突破獎 - 國立台灣大學材料科學與工程學系暨研究所[26] 賀！材料系高熵合金研究計畫團隊榮獲2017未來科技展-未來科技突破獎 - 國立台灣大學材料科學與工程學系暨研究所[27] https://money.udn.com/money/story/5612/3199684[27] https://money.udn.com/money/story/5612/3199684[27] https://money.udn.com/money/story/5612/3199684[27] https://money.udn.com/money/story/5612/3199684[28] 台積電秀自研 4 核心晶片，7 奈米製程最高時脈達 4GHz[28] 台積電秀自研 4 核心晶片，7 奈米製程最高時脈達 4GHz[28] 台積電秀自研 4 核心晶片，7 奈米製程最高時脈達 4GHz[28] 台積電秀自研 4 核心晶片，7 奈米製程最高時脈達 4GHz[29] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/3/eaav2002[29] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/3/eaav2002[29] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/3/eaav2002[29] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/3/eaav2002[30] Making new layered superconductors using high entropy alloys[30] Making new layered superconductors using high entropy alloys[30] Making new layered superconductors using high entropy alloys[30] Making new layered superconductors using high entropy alloys[31] :::成功大學產學雲端平台:::[31] :::成功大學產學雲端平台:::[31] :::成功大學產學雲端平台:::[31] :::成功大學產學雲端平台:::[32] 成大教授疑輕生 墜系館13樓亡 - 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OUTLINEDream of wind and solar renewables saving the climate and ending polluting fossil fuels is becoming a deadly nightmare.Adding renewables causing major cost increase in electricity.Fuel poverty from increased costs kills more than fatal road accidents.Freezing winters everywhere, not moderate without snow as alarmists predicted makes keeping warm a matter of life or death.The fears from predicted catastrophic global warming all fail as 90% of glacier ice expands, Pacific islands rising not sinking, SEA LEVELS STABLE OR FALLING mm of change (7″ in 130 years), fewer hurricanes, floods, tornadoes. wild fires and droughts.Coal is necessary for > 2 billion living without electricity in China, India etc.China opens new coal power every week wiping out all other Co2 cuts.Scientific consensus crumbles as more leading scientists discredit one trick pony hypothesis of weak amounts of CO2 in green house gases.Public opinion shifts against taking action on climate change.Fudging data by UN scientists brings climate science into disrepute.Earth’s climate is too chaotic, nonlinear and unpredictable to know the future more than a few weeks out.Compter models run too hot as researchers fail to mimic reality.US withdraws from Paris accords meaningless carbon targets.Australian political coalition rolls back energy targets and decides to build coal power plants for more cost efficient energy.Yes, we have reached a tipping point about the unreasonable expectations that wind and solar renewables would make any difference to fossil fuel energy consumption and the earth's climate. The large subsidies to renewables in the past decades are failing to create cheap, reliable electricity and they are pushing up the cost of electricity to consumers with devastating consequences for poor consumers.The climate change debate has suffered too much politics and too little science with over the top fear mongering that unsettles the public’s common sense. My comment on Academia.edu - Share research is relevant.https://www.academia.edu/19108426/We_fail_to_act_humanely_or_to_think_sanely_mesmerized_by_fears_like_politicians_demonizing_Syrian_refugees_and_human_made_C02._Philosopher_LUDLOW_-_NYTimes_OP_ED_My_COMMENTFor example, in the UK the winters are getting colder with snow unlike the alarmists predicted. Heat poverty is reaching a crisis causing many fatalities.FREEZING BRITAIN: Bitter polar air to bring COLDEST winter for more than FIVE YEARSHere is a recent damming government report by Professor John Hills of the LSE about the rise of “fuel poverty.” -“More people lose their lives because they are too poor to heat their homes than are killed in road accidents, a Government-commissioned report has revealed.AT least 2,700 people die every winter because they can’t afford their soaring heating bills.Professor John Hills of the London School of Economics, who led the study, said the figure was a “conservative estimate” and could be much higher.The damning report comes after £30billion profits made by the Big Six power companies over the last five years were exposed. But while the energy companies have been making a fortune, fuel poverty in the UK has soared.In 2004 1.2 million people were living in fuel poverty – defined as where more than 10% of a person’s income is spent on heating their home – but this year the figure has jumped to 4.1million.Between 2004 and 2009, the fuel poverty gap – the extra amount families in badly insulated and poorly heated homes would need to spend to keep warm – increased by 50% from £740million to £1.1billion.Professor Hills said: “The evidence shows how serious the problem of fuel poverty is, increasing health risks and hardship for millions, and hampering urgent action to reduce energy waste and carbon emissions.”Fuel poverty kills more people than road accidentsDenmark faces first ‘summer-less’ July in 38 yearsThe [email protected] July 2017Let’s face it, this has hardly felt like summer. Now we’ve got the numbers to prove it.According to the Danish Meteorology Institute (DMI), July is likely to end without a single ‘summer day’, which is defined as any day in which temperatures top 25C (77F) at least somewhere in Denmark.If the next five days come and go without hitting 25C as predicted, it will mark the first time that Danes will have suffered through a summer-less July in nearly four decades.“There are only three years in our records in which July contains a big fat zero when it comes to summer days and temps above 25C. That’s 1962, 1974 and 1979,” climatologist John Cappelen said on the DMI website.DMI’s database goes back to 1874.The warmest day thus far this month was July 19th, when an almost-yet-not-quite-there 24.6C was recorded. There were only two days in all of June that qualified as a summer day, while May had five.But meteorologist Klaus Larsen said that all hope is not yet lost.“The prognoses for the last day of the month - Monday the 31st – are hopping back and forth over the magic point. Until then there are no real signs that we will get over 25C so no matter what we are looking at a meteorological photo finish,” he said.Before banking on Monday to break July’s sad streak, perhaps it’s worth a reminder that DMI wrongly predicted we would top 25C last week.Oh well, we can always hope against hope that August is better.MY COMMENTJames Matkin • 20 hours agoSummerless summers happened in Europe during the Little Ice Age, but Denmark's bleak weather is not climate change. It is weather AND WILL CHANGE. World wide the climate is getting colder. The primary driving forces are solar cycles and ocean currents not human activity. We are in a solar minimum cycle.. Because the climate system is non-linear and unstable we cannot predict future weather more than a couple or weeks ahead. The greatest economic travesty and social reversal is the Paris Accord vanity and conspiracy that governments can change the climate and make it colder by reducing life giving CO2. RUBBISH.https://www.thelocal.dk/20170726/denmark-faces-first-summer-less-july-in-38-yearsAl Gore Humiliation: NASA Study Confirms Sea Levels Are FALLINGWhen we look back on this period of history, we’ll say climate change was one of the greatest hoaxes. Politician-turned-environmental activist, Al Gore has become wealthy beyond his wildest dreams (and intelligence) thanks to pushing the “big lie.”A new study from NASA confirms sea levels are falling — not rising.iceagenow.info reports:NASA satellite sea level observations for the past 24 years show that – on average – sea levels have been rising 3.4 millimeters per year. That’s 0.134 inches, about the thickness of a dime and a nickel stacked together, per year.As I said, that’s the average. But when you focus in on 2016 and 2017, you get a different picture.Sea levels fell in 2016, and with all of this winter’s record-breaking snowfall, I wouldn’t be surprised if they decline again this year.I clicked and zoomed on the above chart as NASA suggested, and obtained a closeup screen shot of sea levels from Jan 2016 to March 2017. This clearly shows the decline.Al Gore has falsely predicted that sea levels would rise by 20 feet, with some of the world’s largest cities underwater.World Tribune reports:Although the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water, Booker noted.“We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish.”All of the talk about the sea rising “is nothing but a colossal scare story,” Booker said, citing Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Morner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change, who “for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe.”Despite fluctuations down as well as up, “the sea is not rising,” Morner says. “It hasn’t risen in 50 years.” If there is any rise this century it will “not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm”. And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that “the apocalypsehttp://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/07/al-gore-humiliation-nasa-study-confirms-sea-levels-falling/Glaciers expanding not melting as predicted.“A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.”NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than LossesThe driving force of climate change is not anthropogenic warming from Co2.AbstractThe identification of causal effects is a fundamental problem in climate change research. Here, a new perspective on climate change causality is presented using the central England temperature (CET) dataset, the longest instrumental temperature record, and a combination of slow feature analysis and wavelet analysis. The driving forces of climate change were investigated and the results showed two independent degrees of freedom —a 3.36-year cycle and a 22.6-year cycle, which seem to be connected to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycle and the Hale sunspot cycle, respectively. [Emphasis added]. Moreover, these driving forces were modulated in amplitude by signals with millennial timescales.The authors Geli Wang & Peicai Yang and Xiuji Zhou are scientists at the CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE and Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, China 中国气象科学研究院My COMMENTJames Matkin 
This research is very relevant and should make climate alarmists pause in their crusade against Co2 emissions from fossil fuels. Far too much focus on Co2 like a one trick pony in a big tent circus where solar radiation is a more compelling show.The thrust of recent research has demonstrated that climate changes continually and is determined by natural forces that humans have no significant control over. Many leading scientists have presented research of other "driving forces" and cautioned against the arrogance of many that "the science is settled." See Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and blogger at Climate Etc. talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about climate change. Curry argues that climate change is a "wicked problem" with a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the expected damage as well as the political and technical challenges of dealing with the phenomenon. She emphasizes the complexity of the climate and how much of the basic science remains incomplete. The conversation closes with a discussion of how concerned citizens can improve their understanding of climate change and climate change policy.
http://www.econtalk.org/arc...https://www.nature.com/articles/srep46091Wind and Solar will not replace fossil fuels due to intermittency.A comprehensive report energy economist Robert Lyman, May 2016, about the issue of when renewables will replace fossil fuels is instructive. Reality of the analysis shows no light at the end of the current renewable tunnel. The wind and solar paradigm is a therefore a fantasy only to make us feel good. Lyman explains -“WHY RENEWABLE ENERGY CANNOT REPLACE FOSSIL FUELS BY 2050Contributed by Robert Lyman © May 2016EXECUTIVE SUMMARYRobert Lyman is an energy economist with 27 years’ experience and was also a public servant and diplomat.A number of environmental groups in Canada and other countries have recently endorsed the “100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water and Sunlight (WWS)” vision articulated in reports written by Mark Jacobson, Mark Delucci and others. This vision seeks to eliminate the use of all fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) in the world by 2050. Jacobson, Delucci et. al. have published “all-sector energy roadmaps” in which they purport to show how each of 139 countries could attain the WWS goal. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the 100% goal is feasible.While a range of renewable energy technologies (e.g. geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal, and wave energy) could play a role in the global transformation, the world foreseen in the WWS vision would be dominated by wind and solar energy. Of 53,535 gigawatts (GW) of new electrical energy generation sources to be built, onshore and offshore wind turbines would supply 19,000 GW (35.4%), solar photovoltaic (PV) plants would supply 17,100 GW (32%) and Concentrated Solar Power plants (CSP) would supply 14,700 GW (27.5%). This would cost $100 trillion, or $3,571 for every household on the planet.Western Europe has extensive experience with investments in renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels. By the end of 2014, the generating capacity of renewable energy plants there was about 216 GW, 22% of Europe’s capacity, but because of the intermittent nature of renewable energy production, the actual output was only 3.8% of Europe’s requirements. The capital costs of renewable energy plants are almost 30 times as high as those of the natural gas plants that could have been built instead; when operating costs are also taken into account, onshore wind plants are 4.6 times as expensive as gas plants and large-scale PV plants are 14.1 times as expensive as gas plants. Wind and solar energy is not “dispatchable” (i.e. capable of varying production quickly to meet changing demand), which results in serious problems – the need to backup renewables with conventional generation plants to avoid shortfalls in supply, and the frequent need to dump surplus generation on the export market at a loss. The current energy system in the United States, Canada and globally is heavily dependent on fossil fuels – they generally supply over 80% of existing energy needs in developed countries and over 87% in the world as a whole. Currently, wind and solar energy sources constitute only one-third of one per cent of global energy supply.The financial costs of building the 100% renewable energy world are enormous, but the land area needed to accommodate such diffuse sources of energy supply is just as daunting.Accommodating the 46,480 solar PV plants envisioned for the U.S. in the WWS vision would take up 650,720 square miles, almost 20% of the lower 48 states. This is close in size to the combined areas of Texas, California, Arizona, and Nevada.A 1000-megawatt (MV) wind farm would use up to 360 square miles of land to produce the same amount of energy as a 1000-MV nuclear plant.To meet 8% of the U.K.’s energy needs, one would have to build 44,000 offshore wind turbines; these would have an area of 13,000 square miles, which would fill the entire 3000 km coastline of the U.K. with a strip 4 km wide.To replace the 440 MW of U.S. generation expected to be retired over the next 25 years, it would take 29.3 billion solar PV panels and 4.4 million battery modules. The area covered by these panels would be equal to that of the state of New Jersey. To produce this many panels, it would take 929 years, assuming they could be built at the pace of one per second.The WWS roadmap for the U.S. calls for 3,637 CSP plants to be built. It would be extremely difficult to find that many sites suitable for a CSP plant. Packed together, they would fill an area of 8,439 square miles, about the area of Metropolitan New York. They would require the manufacture of 63,647,500 mirrors; if they could be manufactured one every ten seconds, it would take 21 years to build that many mirrors.A central component of the WWS vision is the electrification of all transportation uses. This is technically impossible right now, as the technologies have not yet been developed that would allow battery storage applicable to heavy-duty trucks, marine vessels and aircraft. Even in the case of automobiles, despite taxpayer subsidies of $7,500 per vehicle and up, the number of all-electric vehicles sold has consistently fallen far short of governments’ goals.The costs of electrifying passenger rail systems are so high that no private railway would ever take them on. Electrification of a freight railway system makes even less sense, and would cost at least $1 trillion each.The diversion of crops to make biofuels already is raising the cost of food for the world’s poor. The World Resources Institute estimates that if this practice is expanded, it will significantly worsen the world’s ability to meet the calorie requirements of the world’s population by 2050.Scientists and governments have been guilty of the “Apollo Fallacy”; i.e. of thinking that the space race is a model for the development of renewable energy. The Apollo program cost billions of dollars to demonstrate U.S. engineering prowess during the Cold War; costs, and commercial considerations, were secondary considerations, if they counted at all.The proponents of WWS grossly under-estimate the costs of integrating renewable energy sources into the electricity system. The additional costs of backup generation, storage, load balancing and transmission would be enormous.The WWS scenario calls for 39,263 5-MW wind installations in Canada at a cost of $273 billion for the onshore wind generation alone. Building a national backbone of 735 kV transmission lines would cost at least CDN $104 billion and take 20 years to complete.The WWS includes a call to shut down all coal, oil and natural gas production. It implies the closing of all emissions intensive industries, such as mining, petrochemicals, refining, cement, and auto and parts manufacturing. The political and regional backlash against such policies in a country like Canada would threaten Confederation. In short, the WWS vision is based on an unrealistic assessment of the market readiness of a wide range of key technologies. Attaining the vision is not feasible today in technological, economic or political terms.”CONCLUSIONThe WWS vision is not feasible in economic, technological or political terms. Its only purpose, it seems, is to offer the pretense that a credible path to a non-carbon world exists in the period to 2050. The sooner this reality is exposed and confronted, the better. Report, WHY RENEWABLE ENERGY CANNOT REPLACE FOSSIL FUELS BY 2050 A REALITY CHECKhttps://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Renewable-energy-cannot-replace-FF_Lyman.pdfThese graphs of world energy consumption show the reality of renewables failure over the past 40 years to reduce fossil fuel burning.Australia is a good harbinger of the future on this issue. While they repealed their job killing carbon tax this has not helped arrest rising electricity costs. A new coalition is ready to reduce the carbon targets.“For the past decade in Australia it has been political blasphemy to not only question the science of climate change but to not support some form of government forced transition to currently expensive and unreliable renewable energy.Even though the carbon tax was repealed in 2014 by the Abbott Coalition government it didn’t signal the end of high electricity costs in Australia. This was because it was still a bipartisan policy of having a mandated renewable energy target for Australia forcing businesses and consumers to have more of their power from renewable energy sources which is currently 20% by 2020. There are also still massive subsidies to the renewable energy funded through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.The left, media, Labor and Greens love pushing climate change alarmism for many reasons, first it gives them the appearance of helping to save the planet and is another form of virtue signalling. It is also an opportunity for those on the left who hate western civilization and capitalism to go about dismantling the industries we have built and also feeds into their belief that humanity has a negative impact on the world.The end result of this climate change dogma has been for the poor citizens in Australia to see their household electricity prises constantly rising year after year. The rise of electricity prices has also impacted business and industry and has led to the continuing offshoring of our manufacturing operations which has contributed to our high unemployment rate especially amongst the youth. For a movement that is supposed to be about children’s future, climate change programs are doing a good job destroying our children’s economic future.But as the lights are now starting to go out the public will no longer sit back and let politicians collude together to push for more renewable energy. Over the past week in parliament Coalition politicians have talked about building new coal fired power stations to satisfactorily meet energy demands. State Liberal parties have promised to roll back state Labor governments’ renewable energy targets.”Have We Reached a Turning Point in the Climate Change Debate?A final point is that the alarmist crusade vilifying Co2, the essential plant food on earth is weak because the global warming of the past is from natural climate variation and not man made. Leading scientists around the world discredit the warmest theory and scare mongering. See for example -'Climate change' is meaningless, global warming is nonsense - former NASA scientist29 April 2014, 16:51"The term 'climate change' is meaningless. The Earth's climate has been changing since time immemorial, that is since the Earth was formed 1,000 million years ago. The theory of 'man-made climate change' is an unsubstantiated hypothesis," says former NASA scientist, Professor Dr. Leslie Woodcock, challenging the theory promoted by left-leaning Democrats, some in the US government, and President Obama that increased global warming is caused by man, Breitbart News reports.A former NASA scientist has described global warming as "nonsense" saying that it is "absolutely stupid" to blame the recent UK floods on human activity."It's absolutely stupid to blame floods on climate change, as I read the Prime Minister did recently. I don't blame the politicians in this case, however, I blame his so-called scientific advisors."DR. LESLIE WOODOCK former NASA SCIENTISTProfessor Woodcock dismissed evidence for global warming, such as the floods that deluged large parts of Britain this winter, as "anecdotal" and therefore meaningless in science."Events can happen with frequencies on all time scales in the physics of a chaotic system such as the weather. Any point on lowland can flood up to a certain level on all time scales from one month to millions of years and it's completely unpredictable beyond around five days," he said.Professor Les Woodcock, who has had a long and distinguished academic career, also said there is "no reproducible evidence" that carbon dioxide levels have increased over the past century, and blamed the green movement for inflicting economic damage on ordinary people."The theory is that the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuel is the 'greenhouse gas' causes 'global warming' - in fact, water is a much more powerful greenhouse gas and there is 20 time more of it in our atmosphere (around one per cent of the atmosphere) whereas CO2 is only 0.04 per cent, Professor Woodcock told the Yorkshire Evening Post, adding "Even the term 'global warming' does not mean anything unless you give it a time scale. The temperature of the earth has been going up and down for millions of years, if there are extremes, it's nothing to do with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it's not permanent and it's not caused by us."Professor Woodcock is Emeritus Professor of Chemical Thermodynamics at the University of Manchester and has authored over 70 academic papers for a wide range of scientific journals. He received his PhD from the University of London, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a recipient of a Max Planck Society Visiting Fellowship, and a founding editor the journal Molecular Simulation.According to him, the only reason we regularly hear that we have had the most extreme weather "since records began" is that records only began about 100 years ago."The reason records seem to be being frequently broken is simply because we only started keeping them about 100 years ago. There will always be some record broken somewhere when we have another natural fluctuation in weather."When asked how can say this when most of the world's scientists, political leaders and people in general are committed to the theory of global warming, Prof Woodcock answered bluntly: "This is not the way science works. If you tell me that you have a theory there is a teapot in orbit between the earth and the moon, it's not up to me to prove it does not exist, it's up to you to provide the reproducible scientific evidence for your theory. Such evidence for the man-made climate change theory has not been forthcoming."This lack of evidence has not stopped a whole green industry building up, however, he said, arguing that at the behest of that industry, governments have been passing ever more regulations that make life more difficult and expensive."...the damage to our economy the climate change lobby is now costing us is infinitely more destructive to the livelihoods of our grand-children. Indeed, we grand-parents are finding it increasingly expensive just to keep warm as a consequence of the idiotic decisions our politicians have taken in recent years about the green production of electricity."Professor Woodcock is not the only scientist to come out against the theory of man-made global warming. James Lovelock, once described as a "green guru", earlier this month said that climate scientists "just guess", and that no one really knows what's happening.Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, also said that she was "duped into supporting the IPCC" and added "If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic."The issue of so-called man-made global warming has been a topic of liberals for several years who use such false hypothesis in advancing their causes that has caused millions of people economic hardship when data proves otherwise, not to mention, failed alternative energy companies, some scientists claim.While environmentalists and left-wing liberals continue to state that man is the cause of the global warming, the data is proving otherwise. Several scientists as well as others, have pointed out through scientific facts, not theories, that the surface of the earth acquires nearly all of its heat from the sun, not from humans and the only exit for this heat to take is through the form of radiation.In 2012, Robert W. Felix, author and owner of the website, OfIceAgeNow, said and presented visual data of climate change over the past 10,000 years and that it has been warmer in the past than it is today and that warming and cooling cycles have gone on throughout that time.Felix said, “GISP Greenland Ice Core Data shows that it has been warmer than today for almost all of the past 10,000 years. Not only warmer, it shows that temperatures have been declining in a zig-zag fashion for several thousand years.”“If you talk to real scientists who have no political interest, they will tell you there is nothing in global warming. It is an industry, which creates vast amounts of money for some people,” said Woodcock“The reason records seem to be being frequently broken is simply because we only started keeping them about 100 years ago. There will always be some record broken somewhere when we have another natural fluctuation in weather,” Woodcock concluded.Olga Yazhgunovichhttps://sputniknews.com/voiceofrussia/2014_04_29/Climate-change-is-meaningless-global-warming-is-nonsense-former-NASA-scientist-2998/Global Warming Is Natural, Not Man-Madeby Anthony Lupo(NAPSA)—One of the fundamental tenets of our justice system is one is innocent until proven guilty. While that doesn’t apply to scientific discovery, in the global warming debate the prevailing attitude is that human induced global warming is already a fact of life and it is up to doubters to prove otherwise.To complete the analogy, I’ll add that to date, there is no credible evidence to demonstrate that the climatological changes we’ve seen since the mid-1800’s are outside the bounds of natural variability inherent in the earth’s climate system.Thus, any impartial jury should not come back with a “guilty” verdict convicting humanity of forcing recent climatological changes.Even the most ardent supporters of global warming will not argue this point. Instead, they argue that humans are only partially responsible for the observed climate change. If one takes a hard look at the science involved, their assertions appear to be groundless.First, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant as many claim. Carbon dioxide is good for plant life and is a natural constituent of the atmosphere. During Earth’s long history there has been more and less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we see today.Second, they claim that climate is stable and slow to change, and we are accelerating climate change beyond natural variability. That is also not true.Climate change is generally a regional phenomenon and not a global one. Regionally, climate has been shown to change rapidly in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Life on earth will adapt as it has always done. Life on earth has been shown to thrive when planetary temperatures are warmer as opposed to colder.Third, they point to recent model projections that have shown that the earth will warm as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.One should be careful when looking at model projections. After all, these models are crude representations of the real atmosphere and are lacking many fundamental processes and interactions that are inherent in the real atmosphere. The 11 degrees scenario that is thrown around the media as if it were the main stream prediction is an extreme scenario.Most models predict anywhere from a 2 to 6 degree increase over the next century, but even these are problematic given the myriad of problems associated with using models and interpreting their output.No one advocates destruction of the environment, and indeed we have an obligation to take care of our environment for future gen- erations. At the same time, we need to make sound decisions based on scientific facts.My research leads me to believe that we will not be able to state conclusively that global warming is or is not occurring for another 30 to 70 years. We simply don’t understand the climate system well enough nor have the data to demonstrate that human- ity is having a substantial impact on climate change.Anthony R. Lupo is assistant professor of atmospheric science at the University of Missouri at Columbia and served as an expert reviewer for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.Crumbling ‘Consensus’: 500 Scientific Papers Published In 2016 Support A Skeptical Position On Climate AlarmBy Kenneth Richard on 2. January 2017Climate science is supposed to be settled, right?We are told that there is an overwhelming agreement, or consensus, among scientists that most weather and climate changes that have occurred since the mid-20th century have been caused by human activity — our fossil fuel burning and CO2 emissions in particular. We are told that natural mechanisms that used to dominate are no longer exerting much of any influence on weather or climate anymore. Humans predominantly cause weather and climate changes now.For example, we are told that extreme weather (hurricanes, droughts, floods, storms) frequencies and intensities have increased since about 1950 primarily due to the dramatic rise in anthropogenic CO2 emissions since then. Humans are now melting glaciers and ice sheets and (Arctic) sea ice at an alarmingly accelerated rate — reminiscent of an impending “death spiral“. Humans now heat up and acidify the oceans down to depths of thousands of meters by burning fossil fuels. Humans are now in the process of raising sea levels so that they will catastrophically rise by 10 feet in the next 50 years. Because of our CO2 emissions, humans are now endangering the long-term survival of 100s of thousands of animal species (especially polar bears), and climate models say we will cause a million species extinctions over the next 33 years with our CO2 emissions. The Earth is even spinning slower, or faster, no, slower, well, faster — due to human activities. Again, this is all settled science. Only those who possess the temerity to deny this science (“climate deniers”) would disagree, or refuse to believe.But what if much of what we have been told to believe is not actually true? What if scientists do not overwhelmingly agree that humans have dominated (with ~110% attribution) weather and climate changes since about 1950, which is what we have been told by the UN IPCC? What if scientists do not overwhelmingly agree that natural factors exert effectively no influence on weather and climate changes anymore — now that humans have taken over?These are compelling questions. Because in 2016 alone, 500 peer-reviewed scientific papers published in scholarly journals seriously question just how settled the “consensus” science really is that says anthropogenic or CO2 forcing now dominates weather and climate changes, and non-anthropogenic (natural) factors no longer exert much, if any, role.Instead of supporting the “consensus” science one must believe in (to avoid the “climate denier” label), these 500 papers support the position that there are significant limitations and uncertainties inherent in climate modeling and the predictions of future climate catastrophes associated with anthropogenic forcing. Furthermore, these scientific papers strongly suggest that natural factors (the Sun, multi-decadal oceanic oscillations [NAO, AMO/PDO, ENSO], cloud and aerosol albedo variations, etc.) have both in the past and present exerted a significant or dominant influence on weather and climate changes, which means an anthropogenic signal may be much more difficult to detect in the context of such large natural variability. Papers questioning (and undermining) the “consensus” view on paleoclimate (Medieval) warmth, ocean acidification, glacier melt and advance, sea level rise, extreme weather events, past climate forcing mechanisms, climate sensitivity to CO2, etc., are included in this collection.Because of the enormous volume of new papers available that support a skeptical position on anthropogenic climate change alarm, the list of 500 scientific papers with links has been divided into 3 sections, each with its own page (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). There are 68 graphs included in the volume, most of which are used to demonstrate that “hockey-stick” reconstructions of past temperatures and sea levels relative to today are not supported by available evidence.Despite its size, this list will hopefully be user-friendly and easy to navigate as a bookmarkable reference volume due to its outline (below) and organized categorization. Each paper has an embedded link under the authors’ name(s).Finally, there are 132 papers linking solar activity to weather and climate change (in addition to another ~90 that link natural oceanic/atmospheric oscillations [ENSO, NAO, etc.], clouds, volcanic activity . . . to climate change). This is of special note because the IPCC has, since its inception, insisted that solar factors play almost no role in modern climate change. Apparently scientists agree less and less with that “consensus” position.Click any of the 3 links belowPart 1. Natural Mechanisms Of Weather, Climate Change (236 papers)Part 2. Natural Climate Change Observation, Reconstruction (152 papers)Part 3. Unsettled Science, Ineffective Climate Modeling (112 papers)Part 1. Natural Mechanisms Of Weather, Climate ChangeI. Solar Influence On Climate (132)II. Natural Oceanic/Atmospheric Oscillation (ENSO, NAO, AMO, PDO, AMOC) Influence On Climate (45)III. Natural Ozone Variability and Climate (3)IV. A Questionable To Weak Influence Of Humans, CO2 On Climate (11)V. Low CO2 Climate Sensitivity (4)VI. Modern Climate In Phase With Natural Variability (17)VII. Cloud/Aerosol Climate Influence (14)VII. Volcanic/Tectonic Climate Forcing (9)Part 2. Natural Climate Change Observation, ReconstructionI. Lack Of Anthropogenic/CO2 Signal In Sea Level Rise/Mid-Holocene Sea Levels Meters Higher (34)II. Warmer Holocene Climate, Non-Hockey Sticks (40)III. No Net Regional Warming Since Early- Mid-20th Century (15)IV. Abrupt, Degrees-Per-Decade Natural Global Warming (D-O Events) (8)V. The Uncooperative Cryosphere: Polar Ice Sheets, Sea Ice (34)VI. Ocean Acidification? (14)VII. Natural Climate Catastrophes – Without CO2 Changes (4)VIII. Recent Cooling In The North Atlantic (3)Part 3. Unsettled Science, Ineffective Climate ModelingI. Failing/Failed Renewable Energy, Climate Policies (10)II. Climate Model Unreliability/Biases and the Pause (34)III. Elevated CO2 Greens Planet, Raises Crop Yields (10)IV. Wind Turbines, Solar Utilities Endangering Wildlife (7)V. Less Extreme, Unstable Weather With Warming (15)VI. Heat Not Hazardous To Polar Bears, Humans (3)VII. No Increasing Trends In Intense Hurricanes (3)VIII. No Increasing Trends In Drought Frequency, Severity (7)IX. Urban Surfaces Cause (Artificial) Warming (4)X. ‘Settled’ Science Dismantled (3)XI. Natural CO2, Methane Sources Out-Emit Humans (3)XII. Fires, Anthropogenic Climate Change Disconnect (5)XIII. Miscellaneous (4)XIV. Scientists: We Don’t Know (4)- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2017/01/02/crumbling-consensus-500-scientific-papers-published-in-2016-support-a-skeptical-position-on-climate-alarm/comment-page-1/#comment-1155753Climatologists are at the centre of climate science. They study the myriad factors that influence weather and the climate, particularly ocean currents, atmosphere, solar radiation, cloud formation, earthquakes and palaeontology and geology. Climatology studies all of these things over the course of time, typically a 30 year cycle. The American Association of State Climatologists Unlike geologists, astrophysists, chemists and ecologists climate science is the full time primary interest and research of climatologists. Therefore, when the climatologist science organization denies thee man-made unprecedented global warming theory this is very relevant.American Association of State ClimatologistsState Climatologists are Skeptical of Global Warming“Having just returned from the annual meeting of the American Association of State Climatologists (for which I will be President for the next year), I can tell you that there is a great deal of global warming skepticism among my colleagues. For every outspoken scientist like Pat Michaels there are dozens of less verbose but equally committed men and women who do not buy into the Administration's point of view. Far from being a "done deal," the global warming scenarios are looking shakier and shakier. I have encouraged the other state climatologists to speak up on this issue and intend to be a spokesman myself (see, for example, July 25 1998 Science News). It's interesting to me that the tactics of the "advocates" seems to be to 1) call the other side names ("pseudo-scientists") and 2) declare the debate over ("the vast majority of credible scientists believe..."). I'm grateful for those who are running top-notch Web sites (SEPP, junkscience, John Daly, Doug Hoyt, Pat Michaels, etc.) to keep the dialogue open and enable us to share relevant information and scientific data (and also provide encouragement).”George Taylor, State ClimatologistOregon Climate Service316 Strand HallOregon State UniversityCorvallis OR 97331-2209http://www.ocs.orst.eduJapan Society of Energy and Resources was founded in 1980. (1791 MEMBERS)It is an academic society to promote the science and technology concerning energy and resources, and thus to facilitate cooperation among industry, academia and governmental sectors for coping with the problems in this field.“Subcomittee of Japan’s Society of Energy and Resources disses the IPCC – says “recent climate change is driven by natural cycles, not human industrial activity”By Andrew Orlowski The Register UK (h/t) from WUWT reader Ric WermeExclusive Japanese scientists have made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change in a new report from its Energy Commission.Three of the five researchers disagree with the UN’s IPCC view that recent warming is primarily the consequence of man-made industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Remarkably, the subtle and nuanced language typical in such reports has been set aside.One of the five contributors compares computer climate modelling to ancient astrology. Others castigate the paucity of the US ground temperature data set used to support the hypothesis, and declare that the unambiguous warming trend from the mid-part of the 20th Century has ceased.The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is astonishing rebuke to international pressure, and a vote of confidence in Japan’s native marine and astronomical research. Publicly-funded science in the West uniformly backs the hypothesis that industrial influence is primarily responsible for climate change, although fissures have appeared recently. Only one of the five top Japanese scientists commissioned here concurs with the man-made global warming hypothesis.SummaryThree of the five leading scientists contend that recent climate change is driven by natural cycles, not human industrial activity, as political activists argue…Shunichi Akasofu, head of the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, has expressed criticism of the theory before. Akasofu uses historical data to challenge the claim that very recent temperatures represent an anomaly:“We should be cautious, IPCC’s theory that atmospheric temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis. ”Akasofu calls the post-2000 warming trend hypothetical. His harshest words are reserved for advocates who give conjecture the authority of fact.“Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth… The opinion that great disaster will really happen must be broken.”apan's boffins: Global warming isn't man-madeClimate science is 'ancient astrology', claims report”Anthony Watts / February 25, 200925 Feb 2009 at 12:23, Andrew OrlowskiKey Passages TranslatedWhat is the source of the rise in atmospheric temperature in the second half of the 20th century?Shunichi Akasofu[Founding Director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF)Introductory discussion.Point 1.1: Global Warming has haltedGlobal mean temperature rose continuously from 1800-1850. The rate of increase was .05 degrees Celsius per 100 years. This was mostly unrelated to CO2 gas (CO2 began to increase suddenly after 1946. Until the sudden increase, the CO2 emissions rate had been almost unchanged for 100 years). However, since 2001, this increase halted. Despite this, CO2 emissions are still increasing.According to the IPCC panel, global atmospheric temperatures should continue to rise, so it is very likely that the hypothesis that the majority of global warming can be ascribed to the Greenhouse Effect is mistaken. There is no prediction of this halt in global warming in IPCC simulations. The halt of the increase in temperature, and slight downward trend is "something greater than the Greenhouse Effect," but it is in effect. What that "something" is, is natural variability.From this author's research into natural (CO2 emissions unrelated to human activity) climate change over the past 1000 years, it can be asserted that the global temperature increase up to today is primarily recovery from the "Little Ice Age" earth experienced from 1400 through 1800 (i.e. global warming rate of change＝0.5℃/100).The recovery in temperatures since follows a naturally variable 30-50 year cycle, (quasi-periodic variations), and in addition, this cycle has been positive since 1975, and peaked in the year 2000. This quasi-periodic cycle has passed its peak and has begun to turn negative.(The IPCC ascribes the positive change since 1975, for the most part, to CO2 and the Greenhouse Effect.) This quasi-periodic cycle fluctuates 0.1 degrees C per 10 years, short term (on the order of 50 years). This quasi-periodic cycle's amplitude is extremely pronounced in the Arctic Circle , so it is easy to understand. The previous quasi-periodic cycle was positive from 1910 to 1940 and negative from 1940 to 1975 (despite CO2 emissions rapid increase after 1946).Regardless of whether or not the IPCC has sufficiently researched natural variations, they claim that CO2 has increased particularly since 1975. Consequently, after 2000, although it should have continued to rise, atmospheric temperature stabilised completely (despite CO2 emissions continuing to increase). Since 1975 the chances of increase in natural variability (mainly quasiperiodic vibration) are high; moreover, the quasiperiodic vibration has turned negative. For that reason, in 2000 Global Warming stopped, after that, the negative cycle will probably continue.Regarding the current temporary condition (la Nina) JPL observes a fluctuation of the quasiperiodic cycle [JSER editor's note: this book is is still being proofed as of 12/19]. So we should be cautious, IPCC's theory that atmospheric temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis.They should have verified this hypothesis by supercomputer, but before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for "truth". This truth is not observationally accurate testimony. This is sidestepping of global warming theory with quick and easy answers, so the opinion that a great disaster will really happen must be broken.It seems that global warming and the halting of the temperature rise are related to solar activity. Currently, the sun is "hibernating". The end of Sunspot Cycle 23 is already two years late: the cycle should have started in 2007, yet in January 2008 only one sunspot appeared in the sun's northern hemisphere, after that, they vanished completely (new sunspots have now begun to appear in the northern hemisphere). At the current time, it can clearly be seen there are no spots in the photosphere. Lately, solar winds are at their lowest levels in 50 years. Cycle 24 is overdue, and this is is worrisome.American Institute of Professional Geologists: your local geoscientistsDecember 13, 2013“American Institute of Professional Geologists (AIPG) national president Ronald Wallace and Tennessee Section president Todd McFarland (Nashville office of AMEC Earth and Environmental, Inc.) visited Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) on December 5th for an AIPG section meeting. ..“From an education perspective, one of the differences between AIPG and two of the other major geoscience societies, the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union, is that a substantial number of AIPG members have expressed skepticism about the extent to which human activity is to blame for global warming during the last 150 years. In contrast, the Geological Society of America (position statement) and the American Geophysical Union (position statement) follow the lead of most climate scientists in attributing most of the warming to human activity.”“I do not know a single geologist who believes that (global warming ) is a man-made phenonomon.”Peter Sciaky Senate testimony, Oct. 29, 2007, Congressional Record, Senate, Vol. 153. Pt. 20The Paris climate accord fails on all accounts as first the targets are not tough enough to make much difference if carbon is the problem. If the hypothesis is wrong and the earth’s climate is not controlled by the one trick pony of weak CO2 increases in Green House Gases from fossil fuels then Paris is a disaster for > 2 billion living in the dark without electricity and needing more coal powered energy for centuries to come. This CNBC article puts the case for exiting Paris as a benefit to the environment. Sadly, Trump may be on the right track scientifically, but his lack of political credibility weakens his action.Trump's Paris accord exit will save the environmental movement from itselfPresident Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate deal is good for the environment.The truth is the Paris accord is all words, and little action.To save our ecology and our freedoms, we need fewer treaties and less government.Jake Novak | @jakejakenyWednesday, 31 May 2017 | 1:22 PM ETPresident Donald Trump is expected to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.Environmentalists should rejoice!That's right, rejoice. Because by getting the world's largest economy, (that's us), out of yet another amorphous and unenforceable international climate deal, President Trump has likely saved the environmental movement from itself. And now there's also a much better chance that millions of conservative and center/right Americans can rejoin the environmental fold.The green movement in the U.S. and around the world has been off the tracks for decades mostly because of its faulty belief in globalist politics and big government as the solution to environmental challenges. In fact, big government and centrally-planned schemes like the Paris deal are the problem.The first problem with the Paris deal is that, like an OPEC production quota, it's really hard to enforce and cheating is likely to be rampant. As many experts analyzing the agreement have noted, there are no explicit enforcement mechanisms in the accord. So nothing would happen to a country that even just ignored its contribution commitments. That leaves the countries that are more likely to adhere to the climate deal rules, like the U.S., at a distinct economic and political disadvantage.It appears that the supposed triumph of the Paris agreement is that every nation coming into it publicly acknowledged the reality and challenges of climate change coming into the negotiations. Like so many other things in politics, words have become more valuable than deeds. And with no real mechanism to punish countries that cheat on this agreement, there's a chance that the Paris deal could lead to more environmental pollution, not less.People who are really concerned with lowering emissions worldwide need to come to grips with the fact that international agreements where bad actors can't be effectively punished aren't the way to go. It may be intoxicating to see their activism rewarded with the pomp and ceremony of an accord like the Paris climate deal, but they're ultimately meaningless.If the U.S. government wants to do something about the environment, it doesn't need to collude with foreign nations. It would be much better if it started with fixing its own house in a series of moves that conservatives and libertarians could join with liberals to support. They include:·Stop having all taxpayers subsidize and otherwise bolster expensive and environmentally harmful home building in coastal areas. The national flood insurance program, long opposed by liberals and anti-crony capitalist conservatives, does exactly that.·Government at all levels continues to build more roads when more and more evidence shows that no new roads are needed and money would be better spent on repairing old ones. Liberals have long decried the government's anti-environmental road obsession along with conservatives who oppose the continued deficit spending needed to build them.·Excessive regulation has basically killed new nuclear-power plant construction in this country, although nuclear power is safer and pollutes less than many traditional power sources, including coal and natural gas.What's much more meaningful than almost any government program or regulation is the free market's own incentives to clean up the environment. Groups like the Property and Environment Research Center, (PERC) have long explained that less government, not more, is the answer.Their cogent argument is that expanding the amount of privately-owned lands worldwide will increase responsible stewardship as opposed to continued unaccountable government ownership. And they trust the markets to reward and foster more environmentally friendly innovations and practices, as opposed to governments that rely on different levels of taxation and punishment to meet politically-influenced goals.In real terms, America has seen the free market's more effective leadership role time after time. It was the explosion in gas prices, not government rules, that played the biggest role in the auto industry's push to make more fuel-efficient cars in the late 1970s and hybrid cars over the last 15 years. And most experts rank free market innovations and other non-government created developments as the reason why the price of solar panels is now less than half of what they were in 2008, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.The Paris climate deal is one of the most prominent liberal/big government vanities in history. There is simply no evidence that it would be any more effective than the Kyoto or Copenhagen deals, and it unnecessarily raises the hackles of conservatives and moderates who fear a loss of American freedoms and sovereignty. It's agreements like these, often enforced by un-elected and even anonymous bureaucrats that fuel Brexit-like sentiments around the world.The real disaster for the ecology is the environmental movement's decision to push for these kinds of shaky international agreements that could end up harming the environment more and angering a great deal of American voters in the process.President Trump is nixing this latest example of a bad deal for the environment and our Constitutional freedoms and both of those precious American treasures are better off for it.http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/trump-paris-accord-exit-is-good-for-the-environment-commentary.html“Trump's Paris Accord Pullout Applauded by Policy ExpertsPromise Kept to Protect Economy, Safeguard Jobs and Make America a Leader in Energy ProductionNational Center Provides Diverse Perspectives on Trump Action: Scientific, Regulatory, Business and from the African-American CommunityWashington, D.C. - President Donald Trump's decision to remove America from the Paris climate accord is being applauded by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a free-market think-tank which has - for over 25 years - actively opposed anti-competitive regulations that damage the economy and deprive Americans of affordable energy. National Center experts offering a wide array of perspectives on the issue are available to speak about how this action by the Trump Administration will benefit the nation."We applaud President Trump for having the courage to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. It was a bad deal for the U.S. worker, a bad deal for U.S. industry, a bad deal for the environment and a bad deal for our system of government," said National Center President David A. Ridenour, an environmental expert who has attended past United Nations meetings on climate regulation. "Despite requiring a wrenching transformation of our economy that would cost millions of jobs, it would accomplish next to nothing even if you buy into all the dubious science upon which it is premised. Trump made the right choice for the economy, the environment and for constitutional government."Ridenour's full statement is available here."In fulfilling his campaign promise to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, President Trump has struck a blow for millions of Americans whose livelihoods depend on having ready access to affordable and reliable energy," said National Center Senior Fellow Bonner Cohen, Ph.D., an expert in regulatory and energy issues. "By targeting our use of fossil fuels under the wholly specious claim of protecting the climate, the Paris accord was specifically designed to shackle the U.S. economy. Elites here and abroad see our recent emergence as a global energy powerhouse as a threat to their ability to micromanage our lives through transnational agreements and regulations imposed by Washington bureaucrats. With one mighty stroke, President Trump stood up for those who have had no voice for too long.""Trump fixed an Obama error. In honoring his commitment to cancel America's participation in the Paris climate accord, Trump is helping save an estimated 6.5 million jobs and $3 trillion in our national economy," said Stacy Washington, co-chairman of the National Center's Project 21 black leadership network. "The Paris climate accord is unfair and unworkable. While America bears a severe financial burden, countries that pollute as a matter of course such as China are not required to reduce emissions until 2030. This detail alone calls into question the benefit of agreeing to what amounts to the utter destruction of our coal industry. Thank God President Trump said no."Earlier this week, Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper criticized the Paris climate accord on the RT network's "The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann." Cooper noted: "The very same studies that were claiming alarmist predictions say that the Paris treaty doesn't make that much of a difference, and that those same alarmist outcomes are going to occur.""President Trump's decision to exit the Paris climate accord is a victory for the free market and a defeat for rent-seeking corporations," noted Justin Danhof, Esq., the National Center's general counsel and director of its Free Enterprise Project (FEP). "Many corporate leaders became accustomed to the Obama leadership style of selecting winners and losers. In the energy market, Obama rewarded certain green energy providers and users with lavish taxpayer subsidies. It proved detrimental to the American people, especially low-income Americans paying more of their incomes for energy. Appeals by corporate leaders from companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Salesforce to remain in the accord were likely in hopes of keeping this taxpayer-funded gravy train rolling. President Trump showed real leadership, signaling that the corporate welfare state that flourished during the past eight years may be a thing of the past."FEP has challenged corporate leaders at companies such as Apple, Google (now Alphabet Inc.) and Exelon at shareholder meetings about the sustainability of their support for risky regulatory regimes and alternative energy schemes.The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors. Contribute to our impact by donating here. Sign up for email updates here. Follow us on Twitter at @NationalCenter for general announcements. To be alerted to upcoming media appearances by National Center staff, follow our media appearances Twitter account at @NCPPRMedia.”Trump's Paris Accord Pullout Applauded by Policy ExpertsFinal point is that as the scientific consensus for the carbon dioxide hypothesis of global warming crumbles likewise public support for government taking action on climate change deteriorates.https://www.academia.edu/30183146/Leading_scientists_discredit_CO2_theory_of_global_warming_and_repudiate_CO2_is_a_toxin._The_Lessons_Of_Lysenko_shows_distorting_climate_science_will_end_in_tragedyThe United Nations survey of all countries for what are the priorities to make the world a better place finds 97% put climate change at the very bottom when compared with 15 other priorities like a good education, better health care and clean water for example. This means the climate alarmists have only 3% of public support which is as it should be in my opinion because their crusade is based on pseudo-science.http://MYWorld2015 Analytics

These include:MoUs/Agreements between INDIA and USAIndia and UK have agreed to an overarching cyber-relationship framework that among others enables the development of a common and shared understanding of international cyber activity; discuss and share strategies to promote user confidence in the security of ICT products and services; promote cyber security product development; and share information relating R&D etc.On rejuvenation of River Ganga, a MoU has been signed between National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) and Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), UK. The MoU will enable the United Kingdom to support Government of India in sustainable management of water resources in the Ganga Basin through collaborative programmes of research and innovation and exchange of policy experts with the support of UK Water Partnership.The MoU on Skill Development, Vocational education and Training between the two governments seeks to promote greater collaboration in domains such as strengthening skill delivery in high demand sectors where UK has technical and skilling expertise, capacity building of institutions by facilitating the links between UK and Indian corporates and institutions, technical assistance for apprenticeships, quality assessment and certification.In the area of regulation of safe nuclear energy use for peaceful purposes, an arrangement has been arrived at between Atomic Energy Regulatory Board of India (AERB) and the Office for Nuclear Regulation of Great Britain (ONR). The arrangement among others will facilitate exchange of safety-related information concerning the regulation of siting, construction, commissioning, operation, radioactive waste management, decommissioning of civil nuclear installations, and preparedness and management of nuclear and radiological emergencies.A Statement of Intent between NITI Aayog and UK’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has been signed which will enable the two sides to explore potential for regular engagement on technology co-operation in areas such as electric vehicles, AI, FinTech, and advanced manufacturing, as well as utilizing AI, big data and analytics capability for evidence based policy making.The MoU on cooperation in the field of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries Sectors seeks to strengthen collaboration in livestock health and husbandry, breeding, dairying and fisheries, sanitary issues, exchange of scientific personnel, promotion of agro-forestry for planting fodder tree species, bulk transportation of fodder to deficit areas etc.Recognising the increased threat posed by international criminality because of its increasingly complex nature and the threat posed by organised crime, a MoU on Exchange of Information for the Purposes of Combating International Criminality and Tackling Serious Organised Crime has been signed. The MoU will allow the two parties to establish a mechanism for the exchange of information, which will include criminal records, immigration records and intelligence.An Addendum covering research in humanities and social sciences has been added to the 2004 Newton-BhabhaMoU, which supports research and innovation capacities of both sides for long-term sustainable growth. With this addendum, the collaboration will now also extend to Humanities and Social Sciences.The UK has announced setting up a Fast Track Mechanism to identify and resolve specific issues faced by Indian companies who are either in the UK or looking to establish operations in the UK.The All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA), an autonomous organization under the Ministry of Ayush in collaboration with the College of Medicine will set up a Centre of Excellence in Ayurveda and traditional Indian medicine. A MoU between the two institutions has been signed which will enable among others the development of evidence-based guidelines for integrating Ayurvedic principles and practices with modern medicine, and develop Ayurvedic medical education guidelines for Ayurveda education in the UK.India-UK Tech initiatives:UK – India Tech Alliance: NASSCOM and techUK have set up the UK – India Tech Alliance, which will facilitate collaboration on building future skills in new technologies by nurturing a solid skills base in the UK and India, with the support of both the governments. The Alliance will be composed of high-level stakeholders from the technology industry in the United Kingdom and India. The Alliance will assist the governments of UK and India to develop policy in relevant areas by providing a forum for regular dialogue and the exchange of ideas, discuss concerns pertaining to the growth of the sector including, but not limited to skills, new technologies and migration.Technology Summit II: The UK and India announced the Technology Summit II, which will be held in autumn 2018.The Summit will bring together the greatest UK and Indian tech innovators, scientists, entrepreneurs and policy makers to work together to scope and design solutions to challenges including the governance of future tech.AI and Digital Healthcare: The UK and India announced that as partners in the next generation of healthcare, theywill collaborate on digital health pilots in India’s Aspirational Health Districts by applying UK evidence-based healthcare AI and technology to strengthen healthcare delivery. These pilots will be carried out in the areas of self-care, primary, secondary and tertiary care, including eye care, diabetes and cancer.UK tech-initiatives in India:UK-India Tech Hub: The UK announced the creation of a UK-India Tech Hub. Based in the British High Commission in New Delhi the Tech Hub will include a network of people and programmes designed to facilitate ideas, investment and prosperity for India and the UK. It will focus on the fastest growing sectors, including: cybersecurity, AI/data, future mobility, digital manufacturing, healthcare, electric vehicles and digital identity.UK-India Tech Cluster Partnerships: The Tech Cluster partnerships will link world-leading centres of excellence; enable shared innovation and technology exchange; create landing pads for Indian companies in the UK and UK companies in India to drive investment and trade and create high value jobs and build UK and Indian productivity.Advanced Manufacturing Centre: The UK announcedthe potential establishment of an Advanced Manufacturing Centre. Such a centre would support respective industrial strategies and in turn drive growth and jobs in both countries.FinTechRocketship Awards: The UK announced the launch of the FinTechRocketship Awards, a unique, first-of-its-kind FinTech mentoring programme, led by India and the UK’s top FinTech mentors. In the first year, at least 20 FinTech entrepreneurs from each country will be given the opportunity to experience respective ecosystems and pitch for investment.Trade, Investment and FinanceGreen Growth Equity Fund (GGEF): The UK and India launched the fund that will leverage City finance to invest in India’s growth, announcing Eversource Capital, a joint venture between Lightsource BP and Everstone Group, as the Green Growth Equity Fund Manager. An initial investment of £240m from both governments will catalyse additional City finance for green projects in India and UK companies will be able to bid for infrastructure projects financed by the Fund. The Fund will invest in renewable energy, clean transportation, water and waste management in India as part of India’s flagship National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF). UK and India contributions are investments that will generate returns for each country.UK-India Dialogue on Investment: The UK and India announced a Dialogue on Investment to improve our mutual understanding of priorities and review future opportunities for cooperationSector targeting roadmap: The UK and India have agreed to work together on a sector-based roadmap to address trade barriers in life sciences, food and drink and IT sectors.UK-India multilateral trade dialogue: The UK and India will take forward a dialogue under the Joint Working Group on Trade, which will support a shared commitment to the global rules-based system and to the WTO’s role in underpinning it.Fast Track Mechanism: TheUK and India announced a mechanism to support Indian investments into the UK.Commitment to transition EU-India Third Country Agreements: The UK and India announced that this commitment willensure continued application to the UK of EU-India Agreements during the Implementation Period following the UK’s departure from the EU, and put in place arrangements to replicate relevant EU-India agreements beyond this period.UK-India Fintech Dialogue: The two sides decided on the establishment of a FinTech dialogue to discuss further opportunities for financial services collaboration, including policy coordination.Global Force for GoodInternational Solar Alliance: The UK signed the Framework Agreement of the International Solar Alliance and became the 62nd signatory member country. The UK also expressed its commitment to the continued advocacy of ISAs aims and objectives.Research and Development: The UK and India will continue their world-leading research relationship, generating new knowledge and innovations that feed the world’s hungry (high yield crops), protect our environment (clean energy), save lives (advanced healthcare) and drive economic inclusion (digital services)Toward a Free, Open and Prosperous Indo-Pacific INDIA and JAPANH.E. Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan is paying an official visit to India from 13 September to 14 September, 2017 at the invitation of H.E. Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India. On 14 September, the two Prime Ministers held strategic discussions on a wide range of issues under the Special Strategic and Global Partnership between the two countries.The two Prime Ministers welcomed significant deepening of bilateral relations in the past three years and the growing convergence in the political, economic and strategic interests, based on the firm foundation of common values and traditions, as well as on an emerging consensus on contemporary issues of peace, security and development. They decided to work together to elevate their partnership to the next level to advance common strategic objectives at a time when the global community is faced with new challenges.The two Prime Ministers affirmed strong commitment to their values-based partnership in achieving a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific region where sovereignty and international law are respected, and differences are resolved through dialogue, and where all countries, large or small, enjoy freedom of navigation and overflight, sustainable development, and a free, fair, and open trade and investment system.The two Prime Ministers underlined that India and Japan could play a central role in safeguarding and strengthening such a rules-based order. To this end, they pledged to reinforce their efforts to:- align Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy with India’s Act East Policy, including through enhancing maritime security cooperation, improving connectivity in the wider Indo-Pacific region, strengthening cooperation with ASEAN, and promoting discussions between strategists and experts of the two countries;- enhance defence and security cooperation and dialogues, including the MALABAR and other joint exercises, defence equipment and technology cooperation in such areas as surveillance and unmanned system technologies, and defence industry cooperation.- ensure partnerships for prosperity through the India-Japan Investment Promotion Partnership, speedy implementation of key infrastructure projects including the Mumbai Ahmedabad High Speed Railway (MAHSR), and advancing cooperation in the fields of energy, smart cities, information and communication technology, space, science and technology, bio-technology, pharmaceuticals and health.- strengthen people-to-people and cultural ties through enhanced Japanese language teaching in India and collaboration in the fields of tourism, civil aviation, higher education, women’s education, skills development and sports;- work together on global challenges such as proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), terrorism, space and cyber security, United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reform, climate change and environment;- strengthen trilateral cooperation frameworks with the United States, Australia and other countries.Reinforcing Defence and Security CooperationThe two Prime Ministers emphasised the significance of defence and security cooperation in enhancing the strategic partnership between the two countries. In this context, they welcomed the regular and institutionalised engagement through the annual Defence Ministerial Dialogue, the National Security Advisers' dialogue, the "2+2” Dialogue, the Defence Policy Dialogue and Service-to-Service staff talks.The two Prime Ministers commended the significant progress achieved in maritime security cooperation evidenced by the expansion in scale and complexity of the MALABAR Exercise in the Bay of Bengal in July 2017 (MALABAR-17). They noted the ongoing close cooperation between the Indian Navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF) in various specialised areas of mutual interest, including anti-submarine aspects. They also acknowledged the importance of bilateral cooperation in maritime security by strengthening and enhancing exchanges in expanding maritime domain awareness (MDA) in the Indo-Pacific region.The two Prime Ministers shared the intention to expand joint exercises and cooperation in such areas as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR), peacekeeping operations(PKOs), counter-terrorism including the possibility of joint field exercises between Indian Army and Japan’s Ground Self-Defence Force (JGSDF) in 2018, and reciprocal visits by air assets to each other’s country. They welcomed significant development in the long-standing partnership between the two Coast Guards, including the 16th High Level Meeting and the joint exercise in Yokohama in January 2017 between the two coast guards.The two Prime Ministers noted recent progress in bilateral cooperation on defence equipment and technology, including the commencement of the technical discussion for the future research collaboration in the area of Unmanned Ground Vehicles and Robotics. Japan’s readiness to provide its state-of-the-art US-2 amphibian aircraft was appreciated as symbolising the high degree of trust between the two countries. The two governments decided to continue their discussions in this regard.The two Prime Ministers welcomed the recently held annual Defence Ministerial Dialogue and the first Defence Industry Forum in Tokyo on 5 September, which was addressed by the two Defence Ministers as well as the discussions covering other promising initiatives in defence industry cooperation. They recognised the importance of enhancing interactions between governments and defence industries of the two countries in order to encourage equipment collaboration including defence and dual-use technologies.The two Prime Ministers welcomed the holding of the Second India-Japan Cyber Dialogue in New Delhi on 17 August this year and reaffirmed their commitment to an open, free, secure, stable, peaceful and accessible cyberspace, enabling economic growth and innovation as well as mutual cooperation in this regard.Working Together for a Better Connected WorldThe two Prime Ministers expressed their strong commitment to work together to enhance connectivity in India and with other countries in the Indo-Pacific region including Africa. They welcomed the deepening of their connectivity dialogue aimed at achieving concrete progress, and decided to further accelerate such an initiative.The two Prime Ministers also underlined the importance of all countries ensuring the development and use of connectivity infrastructure in an open, transparent and non-exclusive manner based on international standards and responsible debt financing practices, while ensuring respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, the rule of law, and the environment. They also reaffirmed the importance of "quality infrastructure” which, among others ensures alignment with local economic and development strategies, safety, resilience, social and environmental impacts, and job creation as well as capacity building for the local communities.The two Prime Ministers welcomed the efforts to explore the development of industrial corridors and industrial network for the growth of Asia and Africa, which will benefit various stakeholders in the Indo-Pacific region including Africa. They shared the desire to further promote cooperation and collaboration in Africa in line with the priority measures identified through the India-Japan dialogue on Africa and the processes of the India Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) and Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD).The two Prime Ministers welcomed the India-Japan cooperation on development of India’s North Eastern Region (NER) as a concrete symbol of developing synergies between India’s Act East policy and Japan’s Free and Open Indo Pacific Strategy. In this context, they noted with satisfaction the setting up of the India-Japan Act East Forum. They appreciated the cooperation between Japan and North Eastern Region of India, ranging from key infrastructure such as road connectivity, electricity, water supply and sewage, to social and environmental sustainability such as afforestation and community empowerment, as well as people-to-people exchanges including the "IRIS Program” inviting youth from the NER to Japan.The two Prime Ministers also stressed the importance of the development of the smart islands to enhance regional connectivity and decided to further accelerate consultations to identify technologies, infrastructure and development strategies for the purpose.Partnership for prosperityThe two Prime Ministers welcomed the commencement of the project on the ground at the Sabarmati Station for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (MAHSR), which will be an important symbol of a new era marked by the 75th Anniversary of India’s Independence. Expressing satisfaction at the steady progress, they directed their teams to multiply their efforts for achieving the target scheduleThe two Prime Ministers welcomed the exchange of notes for 100 billion yen as the first ODA loan for the MAHSR project. They also witnessed commencement of the construction of the HSR training institute in Vadodara. They appreciated the commencement of the JICA technical cooperation program for the capacity development of the National High Speed Rail Corporation.The two Prime Ministers committed to advancing "Make in India” and transfer of technology in HSR projects, and expressed optimism in this direction. They welcomed the series of business matching efforts to establish India-Japan cooperation, such as the prospective technology collaboration between Kawasaki and BHEL. Both sides will explore further strengthening of partnership in high speed railways. They also recognised that there is potential for further collaboration between India and Japan in the modernisation and expansion of the conventional railway system and the construction of metro rails in India. They also highlighted the importance of the safety of conventional railways, and appreciated the commencement of the JICA technical cooperation program by the dispatch of railways safety experts of Japan in August 2017,followed by a railway safety seminar and other programs.Prime Minister Modi updated Prime Minister Abe about his Government’s efforts for the country’s economic and social development. Prime Minister Abe reiterated Japan’s strong support for the initiatives such as "Make in India”, "Digital India”, "Skill India”, "Smart City”, "Clean India,” and "Start-Up India”. Prime Minister Abe highly appreciated Prime Minister Modi’s economic reforms, especially the historic introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which facilitates ease of doing business and promotes market integration in India by realising a simple, efficient and nation-wide indirect tax system.The two Prime Ministers welcomed the expansion of Japan’s Foreign Direct Investment in India under the "India-Japan Investment Promotion Partnership”, committed to by both sides in 2014. They shared the view that the India-Japan Roadmap for Investment Promotion will provide greater impetus to "Make in India” through investment promotion activities, expanding the scope of professional services and assistance provided by JETRO to Japanese Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) operating in India, Review Mechanisms for Issue Resolution and Approvals, Single Window Clearance Procedures, Japan Industrial Townships and infrastructure development. Prime Minister Abe expressed appreciation for the facilitation provided by "Japan Plus”, and the coordination by the Core Group. They also welcomed the progress in the projects of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), through JICA, the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) including the DMIC Logistic Data Bank Project and expressed expectations of promoting industrial investment in DMIC cities. They welcomed the signing of "the Joint Statement on the Development of the New Capital City and Industrial Cooperation in Andhra Pradesh”. They also welcomed Japanese cooperation for smart city projects in Ahmedabad, Chennai as well as Varanasi.The two Prime Ministers welcomed the signing of the Memorandum of Cooperation on the joint development of the "Japan and India Special Program for Make in India” in Mandal-Becharaj-Khoraj, Gujarat, as a regional development project driven by manufacturing cluster, and the plan to establish a JETRO’s Business Support Centre in its Ahmedabad office to promote Japanese SMEs investment in Gujarat.The two Prime Ministers welcomed the start of the first four Japan-India Institutes for Manufacturing (JIMs) in the States of Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu in 2017,under the Manufacturing Skill Transfer Promotion Program, and looked forward to more JIMs. They also welcomed the commencement of the first Japanese Endowed Courses (JEC) in Andhra Pradesh from September 2017. They strongly hoped that this program will introduce Japanese manufacturing practices and accelerate training of future shop floor leaders and engineers.The two Prime Ministers expressed the confidence that synergy between Japan’s advanced technology and India’s rich human resources can transform both countries into new centres of production in the global industrial network. They underscored the potential to further cooperate in human resources development and exchanges, including through utilising such frameworks as Japan’s "Innovative Asia” initiative and the Technical Intern Training Program(TITP).The two Prime Ministers noted with satisfaction the significant contribution of Japan’s ODA to the socio-economic development of India, especially the historically highest ever amount of ODA loan provided through JICA in the last two consecutive years. Prime Minister Abe expressed Japan’s intention to continue to support India’s efforts for social and industrial development including building key infrastructure projects.Prime Minister Modi appreciated the provision of ODA loan to the following projects, in addition to the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Railway (MAHSR) Project and its related training institute:- Project for Upgradation of Environmental Management for Ship Recycling in Alang and Sosiya in Gujarat- North East Road Network Connectivity Improvement Project (Phase 2)- Kolkata East-West Metro Project (III)- Gujarat Investment Promotion ProgramIn this regard, the two Prime Ministers welcomed progress in the ODA projects in urban transportation sector such as the Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Ahmedabad Metro, the Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link Project, and the introduction of the Intelligence Transport System along with the Eastern Peripheral Highway in Delhi.The two Prime Ministers expressed satisfaction at the entry into force of the Agreement between the Government of the Republic of India and the Government of Japan for Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy. They looked forward to a working group to strengthen bilateral cooperation in this field and reiterated their shared view that the Agreement reflects a new level of mutual confidence and strategic partnership in the cause of clean energy, economic development and a peaceful and secure world.The two Prime Ministers recognised that access to reliable, clean and affordable energy is critical for the economic growth of both countries. In this regard, they decided to strengthen bilateral energy cooperation and welcomed the India-Japan Energy Partnership Initiative as well as early convening of 9th Energy dialogue. They appreciated Japan’s proposal for India-Japan Clean Energy and Energy Efficiency Cooperation Plan. They also welcomed the efforts to promote renewable energy, including the establishment of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), and the progress of New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)’s demonstration project such as a micro grid system using solar power in Neemrana. They looked forward to further acceleration of cooperation in areas of energy saving, energy efficiency and energy storage as well as manufacturing of eco-friendly vehicles including hybrid and electric vehicles.In this regard, the two Prime Ministers welcomed the opening of the first lithium-ion battery factory in India by a joint venture of three Japanese companies – Suzuki, Toshiba and Denso as well as a new automotive factory this year. They decided to further promote public and private sector collaboration to make environmentally friendly and energy efficient technologies accessible and affordable to the general public, recognising that such investments facilitate India’s National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020 (NEMMP) and Faster Adoption of Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles (FAME) vision, and underlined the importance of support measures to promote eco-friendly vehicles including in terms of "Make in India” and transfer of technology.The two Prime Ministers also stressed that sustainable ship industry is one of the key areas for sustainable growth of India, and reaffirmed their intention to achieve an early conclusion of the Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships, 2009.The two Prime Ministers recognised the important role of science and technology in dealing with both developmental and societal challenges, and underlined the importance of enhanced bilateral cooperation in such fields as IoT, ICT, marine science, biomedical sciences, genetics, stem cell technology, and heavy ion radiotherapy. In this regard, they welcomed the successful holding of the 9th India-Japan Joint Committee on Science and Technology Cooperation in January 2017 in Delhi.The two Prime Ministers welcomed the progress made in the bilateral IT and IoT cooperation through the bilateral Joint Working Group on IT and Electronics, in particular by the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) of India and IoT Acceleration Consortium (ITAC) of Japan.The two Prime Ministers directed their respective sides to work closely to establish an India Japan Startup Hub, which will serve as a platform for promotion of information exchange, business collaboration and investments between the vibrant and innovative Startup ecosystems of two countries.The two Prime Ministers acknowledged that outer space is an ever-expanding frontier of human endeavour and welcomed the deepening of cooperation between the space agencies of the two countries in the field of earth observation, satellite based navigation, space sciences and lunar exploration. They welcomed establishment of the ISRO-JAXA Joint Working Group under the space cooperation MoU signed in November 2016. They also welcomed co-hosting by India and Japan of the 24th Session of the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (APRSAF-24) in November 2017 in India. They stressed the importance of enhancing comprehensive space cooperation.The two Prime Ministers noted with satisfaction the progress in the health sector and the joint efforts by their medical experts on medical device development. They also noted the opportunities for collaboration between Indian and Japanese pharmaceutical companies in light of the target regarding the quantitative share of generic medicines in Japan.The two Prime Ministers shared the importance of strengthening cooperation in the fields of agricultural and food related sectors. They welcomed Japan’s participation in World Food India 2017 as a partner country.The two Prime Ministers welcomed the efforts to develop cooperation in disaster prevention, response, recovery and reconstruction as envisaged in the Memorandum of Cooperation on disaster risk reduction between the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Government of India and the Cabinet Office of the Government of Japan . They underlined the importance of identifying and disseminating best practices to "build better” and thus reducing losses arising from infrastructure damage during natural disasters, as aimed by the international coalition proposed by Prime Minister Modi at the Asia Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction(AMCDRR)-2016.The two Prime Ministers recognised the importance of the empowerment of women to maximise their national potential, and decided to strengthen cooperation in this area, including through conferences such as the World Assembly for Women (WAW!). They welcomed the convening of the "Indo-Japan Consultation on ‘Women at Work and Changing Social Norms’” in Delhi in July 2017.Expanding vistas of People-to-People CooperationThe two Prime Ministers renewed their commitment to strengthening human and cultural ties commensurate with their Special Strategic and Global Index of / this context, the two Prime Ministers welcomed a series of cultural events successfully held through the Year of India-Japan Friendly Exchanges in 2017.The two Prime Ministers recognised the importance of expanding Japanese language education in India, for achieving wider and closer industrial cooperation. In this regard, they decided to endeavour towards establishing Japanese language certificate courses at 100 higher educational institutions in India as well as training1,000 Japanese language teachers, over the next five years.The two Prime Ministers welcomed the exchange of notes for the construction of a state-of-art Convention Centre in Varanasi as a symbol of friendship between India and Japan and expressed their hope for its early completion.The two Prime Ministers expressed satisfaction at the increased interaction at all levels of the government, between Members of Parliament, and between prefectures and states. They welcomed the strengthening of parliamentary exchanges through mutual visits of parliamentarians from both sides.With a view to achieving greater policy coordination and deepening intellectual exchanges between the two countries, the two Prime Ministers encouraged interactions among senior officials, strategists and experts in leading think tanks and universities on wide-ranging issues in the Indo-Pacific region.Prime Minister Modi welcomed the growing interest in celebrating the International Day of Yoga in Japan and, in particular, welcomed the first-ever Parliamentary League for Promotion of Yoga set up in the Japanese Diet in April 2017.The two Prime Ministers underscored the importance of promoting tourism exchange between the two countries and hoped that the opening of the Japan National Tourism Organisation (JNTO) office in Delhi in March 2017 and further relaxation of visa requirements will facilitate business and tourism links between the two countries.The two Prime Ministers welcomed the expansion of civil aviation connectivity between India and Japan, utilising the recently updated open sky policies between the two countries.The two Prime Ministers noted the steady increase in the number of Indian students in Japan. They welcomed the SAKURA Science Plan (Japan-Asia Youth Exchange Programme in Science) and the Japan East Asia Network of Exchange for Students and Youths (JENESYS) which contributed to increase in numbers of young Indian students and researchers in science and technology visiting Japan and hoped for further strengthening of collaboration in these fields.Aiming to enhance the positive influence of traditions of non-violence, tolerance and democracy in Asia, the two Prime Ministers welcomed the SAMVAD II conference held in Yangon, Myanmar, in August 2017 and looked forward to the next conference in 2018.Prime Minister Abe welcomed the support offered by Prime Minister Modi for Japan’s efforts towards the successful organisation of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The two Prime Ministers noted with satisfaction the institutional linkages set up between India and Japan. They also acknowledged that the Olympic and Paralympic Games offer a unique opportunity for the two countries to further deepen their cooperation.Working with Partners on Regional and Global ChallengesWelcoming the 50th anniversary of the establishment of ASEAN, the two Prime Ministers renewed their commitment to strengthening political, economic, and security cooperation with ASEAN countries, with a view to supporting the ASEAN’s unity and its centrality to regional architecture. They welcomed deepening bilateral policy coordination, including the launch of the India-Japan Dialogue on ASEAN in March 2017, and determined to work together to shape and strengthen the evolving regional architecture through ASEAN-led fora such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus, the Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum.The two Prime Ministers reaffirmed that regular convening of the East Asia Summit (EAS) Ambassadors Meeting in Jakarta and the establishment of EAS Unit within the ASEAN Secretariat have contributed to ensuring that the EAS process, as the premier leaders-led forum to discuss broad strategic, security and economic issues of common concern, continues to retain its dynamic proactiveness in responding to emerging issues of global importance. They decided to work in unison to enhance physical and digital connectivity within the EAS framework while striving to ensure greater economic benefits to all in an equitable and balanced manner. They also decided to continue to enhance their cooperation in the maritime domain bilaterally as well as in multilateral fora.The two Prime Ministers reaffirmed the importance of freedom of navigation, overflight and unimpeded lawful commerce in accordance with international laws. They also highlighted the importance of peaceful resolution of disputes, including through full respect for legal and diplomatic processes, without resorting to the threat or use of force, and in accordance with the universally recognised principles of international law, notably the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The two Prime Ministers also reiterated their desire and determination to work together to maintain and promote peace, stability, and development in the Indo-Pacific region.The two Prime Ministers reaffirmed the importance of securing the maritime domain and combating piracy, armed robbery at sea and other transnational organised crimes through regional and international mechanisms such as the ARF, the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP), the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS) and Shared Awareness and Deconfliction (SHADE) Mechanism, and expressed their commitment to pursue regional and international cooperation to combat these activities.The two Prime Ministers welcomed the renewed momentum for trilateral cooperation with the US and Australia. They stressed on the strategic importance of these cooperative frameworks and shared willingness to expand concrete cooperation. They resolved to work with other countries and regional partners to ensure a rule-based order in the Indo-Pacific Region.The two Prime Ministers condemned in the strongest terms North Korea’s continued development of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, including the latest nuclear test conducted by North Korea on 3 September as well as its uranium enrichment activities. Recognising that North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and its proliferation links, including the launch of a ballistic missile flying over Japanese territory on 29 August 2017, pose grave and real threat to international peace and stability and the international non-proliferation efforts, the two Prime Ministers strongly urged North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and not to take any further provocative actions, and to fully comply with its international obligations under relevant UNSC resolutions including the newly and unanimously adopted resolution 2375, and other international commitments. They pledged to work together to deal with the current serious situation and called on the international community to rigorously and fully implement relevant UNSC resolutions to maximise pressure on North Korea. They stressed the importance of holding accountable all parties that have supported North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes. They also urged North Korea to address at the earliest the abductions issue.The two Prime Ministers also condemned in the strongest terms the growing menace of terrorism and violent extremism. They shared the view that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations is a global scourge that must be forcefully combatted through concerted global action in the spirit of "zero tolerance”. Accordingly, the two Prime Ministers called upon all UN member countries to implement the UNSC Resolution 1267 and other relevant resolutions designating terrorist entities. They also called upon all countries to work towards rooting out terrorist safe havens and infrastructure, disrupting terrorist networks and financing channels and halting cross-border movement of terrorists. They underlined the need for all countries to ensure that their territory is not used to launch terrorist attacks on other countries. They emphasised the need for stronger international partnership in countering terrorism and violent extremism, including through increased sharing of information and intelligence. They called for enhanced bilateral cooperation in this regard. The two Prime Ministers also called for Pakistan to bring to justice the perpetrators of terrorist attacks including those of the November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai and the 2016 terrorist attack in Pathankot. They looked forward to the convening of the fifth India-Japan Consultation on Terrorism and to strengthening cooperation against terrorist threats from groups including Al-Qaida, ISIS, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lakshar-e-Tayyiba, and their affiliates.The two Prime Ministers reaffirmed their shared commitment to expedite the reform process of the United Nations, in particular the UN Security Council, in order to make it more legitimate, effective and representative, given the contemporary realities of the 21st century, and emphasized the importance of building upon the recent developments in the Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) aimed at launching text-based negotiations during the 72nd session of the General Assembly. In this regard, they also called for collaboration among reform-oriented countries through the "Group of Friends” on UNSC reform. They reiterated their support for each other’s candidature, based on the firmly shared recognition that India and Japan are legitimate candidates for permanent membership in an expanded UNSC.The two Prime Ministers reaffirmed their shared commitment to the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Prime Minister Abe stressed the importance of early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). They called for an immediate commencement and early conclusion of negotiations on a non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) on the basis of Shannon Mandate. They expressed their resolve towards strengthening international cooperation to address the challenges of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.Prime Minister Abe welcomed India's accession to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and the Hague Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (HCOC) and its intensified engagement with the export control regimes. The two Prime Ministers reaffirmed their commitment to work together for India to become a full member in the remaining three international export control regimes: Nuclear Suppliers Group, Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group, with the aim to strengthen the international non-proliferation efforts.The two Prime Ministers emphasised the need for concerted global action to combat climate change reflecting the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances and to preserve the environment for future generations. They reiterated their commitment to work together to finalise the work programme for implementation of the Paris Agreement adopted under the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change by 2018. They also decided to accelerate further consultations on the Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM). Prime Minister Modi welcomed Japan’s cooperation on Clean India, including the Clean Ganga project.The two Prime Ministers underlined the crucial role of the rules-based multilateral trading system, and enhancing free, fair, and open trade, for achieving sustainable growth and development. They committed to resist protectionism including unfair trade practices and underlined the need to remove trade-distorting measures. They reaffirmed their commitment to work together to implement the Bali and Nairobi Ministerial decisions and make the eleventh WTO Ministerial Conference a success. They also decided to steadily implement WTO’s Trade Facilitation Agreement.Recognising India as the largest democracy and a fast growing large economy in the Asia-Pacific region, and acknowledging India’s robust macro-economic stability and its efforts at financial reforms, Japan reaffirmed its support to India’s membership in the APEC. The two Prime Ministers decided to work towards liberalisation and facilitation of trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region. They reaffirmed to cooperate towards conclusion of a modern, comprehensive, high quality and mutually beneficial Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement, in order to achieve a balanced outcome. They reaffirmed their commitment to further strengthening cooperation and to working with partners to tackle excess capacity in steel. In this regard, they called for the removal of market-distorting subsidies and other types of support by governments and related entities. They also reaffirmed their commitment to developing concrete policy solutions at the Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity by November 2017.ConclusionPrime Minister Abe thanked the Government and the people of India for their warm hospitality and extended a cordial invitation to Prime Minister Modi to visit Japan at a mutually convenient time for the next annual summit meeting. Prime Minister Modi accepted the invitation with appreciation.Prime Minister of the Republic of India ---- Prime Minister of JapanSigned at Gandhinagar, Gujarat on 14 September 2017.