China lures chip talent from Taiwan with fat salaries, perks
A huge pay rise, eight free trips home a year and a heavily subsidized apartment. It was a dream job offer that a Taiwanese engineer simply could not refuse.
A veteran of Taiwan’s top-tier chipmakers, including United Microelectronics Corp (UMC)( 2303.TW), the engineer took up the offer from a Chinese state-backed chipmaker last year and now oversees a small team at a wafer foundry in eastern China.
The engineer joined a growing band of senior Taiwan professionals working in China’s booming and fast-developing semiconductor industry.
Attracting such talent from Taiwan has become a key part of an effort by China 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 U.S.-China trade tensions escalated, according to recruiters and industry insiders, exposing what China feels is an over-reliance on foreign-made chips.
China imported $260 billion worth of semiconductors in 2017, more than its imports of crude oil. Home-made chips made up less than 20 percent of domestic demand in the same year, according to China Semiconductor Industry Association.
More than 300 senior engineers from Taiwan have moved to Chinese chipmakers so far this year, joining nearly 1,000 others who have relocated since Beijing set up a $22 billion fund to develop the chip industry in 2014, according to estimates from H&L Management Consultants, a Taipei-based recruitment firm.
The battle for skilled engineers has raised concerns in Taiwan that the island could lose a key economic engine to its political foe, China. Analysts say China is still years behind Taiwan in terms of chip design and manufacturing, however, even as it moves ahead in terms of the production of lower-end chips.
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