Hmnnnn ... interesting, to prospect and cut out the middlemen, and get to the next level, since especially the unwelcome that must greet ethnic Chinese in Silicon Valley... let’s see how it all goes ...
ft.com
US fears attempts by Chinese chipmakers to grab top talentWashington’s moves against Fujian Jinhua lift lid on battle to recruit top engineers
A chip made by Taiwan-based Micron. There are now about 1,000 Taiwanese engineers working in Chinese chip companies © BloombergThis was a week of reckoning for Fujian Jinhua. First, the US government put the Chinese semiconductor company on an export control blacklist. Then it filed charges against the company for allegedly stealing technology from US memory chipmaker Micron.
But Washington was also making a broader point. “We are here to say that enough is enough,” said Jeff Sessions, the US attorney-general.
Fujian Jinhua is accused of luring two Micron employees with the promise of higher salaries and on the condition that they bring key process technology with them.
According to court documents and Taiwanese investigators, United Microelectronics Corporation, a Taiwanese contract chipmaker which had entered a co-operation agreement with Fujian Jinhua, poached the two engineers at Micron Memory Taiwan, one of its subsidiaries, and passed everything they brought on to its Chinese partner.
Fujian Jinhua did respond to requests for comment.
UMC said the allegations in the indictment were virtually the same as in Micron’s previous civil complaint, and pointed to the fact that it had suspended its R&D co-operation with Fujian Jinhua after the export ban was imposed. “UMC regrets that the US Attorney’s Office brought these charges without first notifying UMC and giving it an opportunity to discuss the matter,” the company said on Friday.
Signs of US-China trade tensions easing
The case is just the latest example of a battle China has been fighting for many years to lure leading expertise in a bid to achieve a set of technology sector goals, such as building a world-class semiconductor industry. Under the Thousand Talents Plan, a programme set up 10 years ago by Beijing, China wants to recruit top science and engineering experts from abroad to help as part of its Made in China 2025 project to build world-leading capacity in key sectors. That has fuelled concerns in the US over technology theft and forced technology transfer.“If we are in an economic war with China, it’s a war for talent,” said a US diplomat in Asia.
Taiwan’s semiconductor companies — many of which are contract manufacturers that make chips designed in the US and elsewhere and have the leading-edge process technology Chinese companies still struggle to master — have been a prime target.
Employees in our companies are easier to lure — we speak the same language, we share the same culture
Su Tzu-yun, Institute for National Defence and Security Research
While Fujian Jinhua was poaching the MMT engineers, two engineers from Inotera, another Micron affiliate in Taiwan, joined Tsinghua Unigroup, leading Taiwanese investigators to allege that technology was illegally transferred as well.
Tsinghua Unigroup did not respond to a request for comment.
Two years earlier, Tsinghua had unsuccessfully approached Micron with a takeover offer. Yangtze Memory Technologies, a Tsinghua subsidiary, has since become China’s leading maker of Nand Flash memory, a key data storage medium.
In another case, Taiwanese prosecutors have accused two former engineers from Taiwanese speciality chipmaker Win Semiconductors and chip foundry Wavetek respectively of having stolen their former employers’ technology when transferring to Chengdu Gastone, another Chinese chip company.
Chengdu Gastone did not respond to a request for comment.
“Employees in our companies are easier to lure — we speak the same language, we share the same culture,” said Su Tzu-yun, a senior official at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, a think-tank backed by Taiwan’s defence ministry and National Security Council.
As early as 2000, Richard Chang, a former Texas Instruments executive, quit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to set up Semiconductor Manufacturing International, a rival outfit in China. Although Mr Chang left SMIC when the company lost a lawsuit over stealing TSMC’s trade secrets nine years later, his company is now China’s largest chipmaker.
The country’s pull for chip experts from across the strait and elsewhere also appears to have become irresistible. Over the past three years alone, scores of engineers from Taiwanese chipmakers have joined Chinese semiconductor businesses. In several cases, there have been accusations that they took technology with them.
In addition, Beijing is fine-tuning its policy measures: instead of just wooing Taiwanese companies as it has done for more than 20 years, it now has a number of incentives to lure individual Taiwanese citizens to study, research and work in China.
“Overall there are about 1,000 Taiwanese engineers working in Chinese chip companies now,” said Lin Jian-hong, a semiconductor analyst at Trendforce, an industry research house in Taipei.
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Some of these are believed to be stationed at Chinese state-owned companies temporarily under agreements with Taiwanese chipmakers that help run those China-based fabrication plants. “But given that companies have entered such deals, it is clear that this is happening on an individual basis as well,” said Mr Lin.
But government officials and industry executives say Japan and South Korea are affected too.
“It is a big concern for us that technology is flowing to Chinese companies — via Taiwan, but also via our own engineers who are hired directly,” said a Japanese security official.
An executive in a South Korean technology company and one of the country’s diplomats said the number of engineers in its semiconductor companies poached by Chinese rivals was rising rapidly.
According to government officials and industry executives in the affected countries, Chinese companies are targeting two groups of engineers: senior industry veterans in their 40s and 50s who have in-depth knowledge of current manufacturing processes; and very young talent just out of university.
“For those in their 40s and 50s, it is a no-brainer: they get offered the same figure salary but in Rmb instead of NT$, which means four times as much,” said an executive at TSMC.
The South Korean diplomat confirmed the same pattern for engineers being poached from companies such as Samsung. “They get the chance to make the money they need to put their kids through university and have a cushion for retirement, but faster than they would be at home,” he said.
Jumping ship
Some recent hires of senior Taiwanese chip executives by Chinese companies
October 2015
Tsinghua Unigroup, a Chinese state-backed chipmaker, hires Charles Kau, former head of Inotera, Micron’s joint-venture in Taiwan who had also worked at Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, TSMC and Macronix.
December 2016
Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC), a Chinese chipmaker founded by a former Taiwanese semiconductor executive, hires Chiang Shang-yi, a retired veteran R&D executive at TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker.
January 2017
Tsinghua Unigroup hires Sun Shih-wei, former chief executive and deputy chairman of United Microelectronics, Taiwan’s second-largest contract chipmaker.
October 2017
SMIC hires Liang Mong-song, another former TSMC senior executive, from Samsung. |
