The major development over the past decade or more has been the rapid emergence of Asian economies
as increasingly strong players in the world’ s S&T system, with South Korea and Taiwan being joined by Singapore,
Malaysia, Thailand, and others. This report provides a range of standard indicators of S&T infrastructure and performance
to highlight the growth of Asia’ s S&T enterprise. Where possible, it provides comparable information for Asia, the EU,
and the United States. China has already become an important player in high-technology markets, and has attracted the
world’ s major corporations. By 2003 China had become the third largest R&D-performing country, behind only the
United States and Japan.