The decline of traditional manufacturing industry and import and export had brought along issues. Sweatshop phenomenon among Taiwanese companies raised more and more public attention. According to statistics from NGO, from 2010 to 2011, the rights of the workers at Taiwanese factories in Kunshan were violated.

　　Issues that occurred in Kunshan Renbao factory included:

　　The workers did not have a copy of their labor contract;

　　The factory forced workers to work overtime;

　　The workers did not have any professional training on environment and health;

　　Kunshan Foxconn factory:

　　The workers worked at least ten hours per day and got only a day off on Sunday;

　　The workers had to pay ￥170 for the social insurance;

　　Irregular overtime working

　　It’s even worse for the interns since during the six-month internship agreement the interns would have no extra payment for working overtime and the factory wouldn’t buy social insurance for them.

　　The cost increase of labor and manufacturing, the decrease of supporting policies, and the growing pressure from the competition in the market had made Taiwanese companies realize their golden age had come to an end in Kunshan. Kunshan’s municipal party secretary Zhang Guohua stated in 2010 that: “If you are not making money in Kunshan, then I suggest you find another place to achieve that.”

　　In August 2014, Zhongrong factory exploded, injuring and killing lots of people, which eventually surfaced Kunshan’s problems that had also grown alongside with its fast economic growth. Kunshan had been the leading county in China for several years, and before the explosion Kunshan’s city committee even studied the issues of city transformation.

　　After enjoying over 20 years of demographic dividend, Kunshan had been considering ways to have its second growth opportunity. And this time, an overseas university reached out to Kunshan.

　　The triangle

　　The Research Triangle Park amasses a great amount of companies

　　Besides the Silicon Valley in the west coast, the U.S also has a high tech zone named Research Triangle Park in the east coast that concentrates three research based universities: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, and Duke University.

　　At present, this 28 square kilometers region is home to over 200 companies and 46,000 high tech professionals. IBM’s second largest operation center is based in this region while GlaxoSmithKline has based its biggest R&D center here. It’s also the second important foothold for Cisco while having Red Hat and Lenovo’s HQ as well.

　　The Research Triangle Park has a history of 50 years.

　　After the second world war, North Carolina’s spinning, tobacco and furniture industry fell into a decline that lasted for over a decade, causing profound economic downfall for the region and massive job loss. In the 50s, the state, the local government, companies and schools put job opportunity generation and diversifying the economy on their agenda. In 1959, they came up with the Research Triangle Park blueprint, focusing on the ever-growing high tech industry.

　　In late 60s, Research Triangle Park only had 21 companies in the region. The number then has surged to 178 by 2013. As a matter of fact, companies with less than 50 staff account for 70% of these companies. Almost 90% of these small-sized companies moved into the zone after 2000. 45% of companies in the region focus on biotech and life science, and over 18% focus on communication and information technology.

　　Guided by policies and it own advantages, lots of companies had chosen Research Triangle Park as their base, bringing out the agglomeration effect. Research shows that a region’s income and development level rises along with the average education level and technical proficiency in the region. The three universities mentioned above have provided the companies in the region with talented graduates and research resources. In 1998, one fourth of the new employees in this region were from the three universities mentioned above. In 2006, 5% of the staff in this region were Ph.D holder.

　　More importantly, the congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980.

　　The Bayh–Dole Act is United States legislation dealing with intellectual property arising from federal government-funded research. The key change made by Bayh–Dole was in ownership of inventions made with federal funding. Before the Bayh–Dole Act, federal research funding contracts and grants obligated inventors (where ever they worked) to assign inventions they made using federal funding to the federal government. Bayh–Dole permits a university, small business, or non-profit institution to elect to pursue ownership of an invention in preference to the government.