T 3 From Farmers to Manufacturers Taiwan is a small country,but it plays an outsized role in the global economy.It's one of the world's top fifteen trading nations,and its com- panies manufacture a huge share of the information technology that keeps modern societies going:98 percent of computer motherboards,90 percent of notebook PCs,65 percent or more of thin-film transistor-liquid-crystal display (TFT-LCD)screens.A single Taiwanese company-Taiwan Semi- conductor Manufacturing Corporation-makes more than half the world's computer chips,while Acer,Taiwan's first global computer brand,edged past U.S.-based Dell Computer in 2009 to become the world's second- largest seller of notebook PCs. The story of how this tiny island-endowed with few natural resources and a small population-became a global economic powerhouse brings together politics,culture,economics...and a little luck.Together,Taiwan's government and people-its workers,entrepreneurs,farmers,engineers, merchants,and students-earned for their nation the title "Taiwan Mira- cle."They did it by looking outward toward world markets and by staying light on their feet,adjusting constantly to new technologies,new products, new demand.In less than half a century they built a war-torn agrarian back- water into a high-tech superpower. The roots of Taiwan's global outlook run deep.The island's earliest export was a classic specialty product:deer antlers.According to Chinese medical theory,deer antlers cure diseases of the bones,joints,and blood. As early as the 1600s,Austronesian hunters were harvesting wild deer in Taiwan and exchanging them for salt with Chinese traders who delivered them to the mainland as medicine and meat.These earliest Chinese resi- dents lived in the shallow coves and harbors along the island's west coast; 41