Foreign corporations set up cross-strait R&D centers; ours smaller

As of end-October there are already nine corporations, including Sony, HP, Dell, Microsoft and IBM, participating in the innovation and R&D center project in the Executive Yuan's "2008-Challenge National Development Plan", by setting up their technology or R&D centers in Taiwan.  However, in the mean while, major foreign businesses have consistently invested more money on their R&D centers in Mainland China, which render the R&D centers in Taiwan comparatively smaller in scale.  Their composition and technical level are also worth noting. 

Intel, Microsoft and IBM et al. have started to establish laboratories or R&D centers as early as ten years ago, while Dell and HP have respectively set up a design center and a software R&D center in 2002.  Mainland China has a large market and an abundance of basic research talents, while Taiwanese talents are more creative.  As such, when designing the R&D map across the Strait, foreign corporations have meant to orient Mainland Chinese R&D towards technology development, and Taiwan R&D towards applications.