Taiwanese engineers lured to mainland China as chip makers go into overdrive
Skilled workers finding it hard to resist fat salaries and perks, raising concern on the island that it could lose a key economic engine to political foe
A huge pay rise, eight free trips home a year and a heavily subsidised flat. It was a dream job offer that a Taiwanese engineer simply could not refuse.
A veteran of Taiwan’s top-tier chip makers, including United Microelectronics Corp (UMC), the engineer took up the offer from a mainland China state-backed chip maker last year and now oversees a small team at a wafer foundry in eastern China.
The engineer joined a growing band of senior Taiwanese professionals working in the mainland’s booming and fast-developing semiconductor industry.
Attracting such talent from Taiwan has become a key part of an effort by Beijing to put the industry into overdrive and reduce the country’s dependence on overseas firms for the prized chips that power everything from smartphones to military satellites.
That drive, which started in 2014, intensified this year as US-China trade tensions escalated, according to recruiters and industry insiders, exposing what China feels is an overreliance on foreign-made chips.
China imported US$260 billion worth of semiconductors in 2017, more than its imports of crude oil. Chinese-made chips made up less than 20 per cent of domestic demand in the same year, according to the China Semiconductor Industry Association.