Taiwan, together with her three counterparts, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore, saw growth rates so high during the Cold War that outsiders labeled them the the "four little dragons" and sought to learn the secrets of their success. Political economists in the 1990s argued that the state led the economic growth in these polities and termed them (excepting Hong Kong) "developmental." In examining the nationalist (Kuomintang, KMT) government's science and technology policy in Taiwan, Megan Greene asserts that the formation of the developmental state was a highly contingent process. Through reviewing archival material and personal correspondence from Taiwanese government leaders, ministries, and commissions as well as published annual reports, Greene argues that Taiwan became a developmental state in the 1970s, as opposed to previous scholarship that argued for an earlier date of 1930s. The process depended on external factors such as the threats posed by the People's Republic of China's (PC) nuclear weapons program and the interventions of the US science and technology (S&T) missions to Taiwan. Indigenous efforts by Taiwanese technocrats in translating rhetoric into real institutional frameworks for industrysociety collaboration such as the Industrial Technology Research Institute and the Hsinchu Science Park were also crucial in the transformation of Taiwan into a devel. opmental state.
