•Barbie dolls were first produced in 1959 by the American toy company Mattel in Japan
•In the late 1960s its main factory moved to Taiwan to lower labour costs
•This was the start of eastern Asia becoming the 'workshop of the world'
•As its height the factory produced over 1/2 the Barbie dolls made
•Within 20 years incomes in Taiwan led Mattel to look elsewhere for cheaper labour
•In 1987 it opened its first factory in China
•Today, Mattel still has 2 factories in China but also in Malaysia and Indonesia
•The Taiwanese economy has benefitted further from globalisation
•The island is now home to many of the companies making most of the worlds laptops, personal organisers and MP3 players
-Asustek makes iPods and Mac minis for Apple and the motherboards of 1 in 3 of the worlds desktop computers
-Quanta is the worlds largest manufacturer of laptop computers and with other Taiwan firms make 75% of laptops for Dell, Sony, Hewlett-Packard and many more.
-TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is the worlds largest manufacturer of outsourced computer chips with about 50% of the market
•Taiwan is concerned that these high tech industries will also move to mainland China (Asustek already have factories there)
•There rulers are confident that their reputation for reliability will allow them to remain with there industries for the foreseeable future.
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