Li Kwoh-ting

▪ 2002

      Chinese-born Taiwanese economist and government official (b. Jan. 28, 1910, Nanjing, China—d. May 31, 2001, Taipei, Taiwan), helped spearhead the effort to transform Taiwan's economy from a relatively poor, agrarian-based system into one of the world's leading producers of information and telecommunications technology. Li, a Nationalist Party member who fled from China to Taiwan in 1949, served as the country's economics minister from 1965 to 1969 and as finance minister from 1969 to 1976. As a minister without portfolio from 1976 to 1988, he remained an influential policy maker in those fields. In 1979 Li created a large industrial park in the port city of Hsinchu that came to be known as Taiwan's “Silicon Valley.” In later years he served as an adviser to Pres. Lee Teng-hui and to Lee's successor, Chen Shui-bian.

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