Taiwanese businesses are not treating the millennium date problem with urgency, because the majority of people believe they will not be affected for another 13 years because the country works on a different calendar. According to the republican calendar, attributed to the founding of the now exiled Republic of China, the year is 87 in Taiwan, 13 years before it has to contend with changing to 100. But a Reuters report suggests Taiwan will face the same millennium problem as the rest of the world, because Taiwan’s computers are built on the same underlying operating clocks as other computers. The Taiwanese Government is working hard to prompt the country’s organizations into action, so they don’t fall behind the rest of the world. Organizations operating within public services, public utilities, air transport, the financial sector and the military all have to demonstrate compliance by April next year, or face severe discipline. If such entities don’t pass the tests, they will be ordered to shut down in mid-1999, removing the possibility of failure on January 1, 2000.
