"If mankind eradicates the habitat of the giant panda, then the panda ceases to exist in the wild. The IMF package is a mandate to eradicate the existing habitat of Asia's corporates." -- Russel Napier, a strategist at Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia

Morris Chang was the father of Taiwan's semiconductor industry. As a young graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was hired by Texas Instruments in 1958. He stayed for 25 years, rising to the position of vice president in charge of the group's semiconductor activities worldwide. By 1985, he was running a company called General Instrument Corp. when he was called home by the Taiwan government and given the chairmanship of the Institute for Industrial Technology Research.

It was one of those think-tanks established by the Chinese Nationalist government with the aim of making the island a center of industrial excellence. He ran the institute until 1994. But Dr. Morris Chang, who did his doctorate at Stanford University in 1964, was no armchair researcher. "I am a professional manager myself," he used to say.