China is allegedly trying to poach Taiwanese tech talent

Taiwan is home to TSMC, the biggest chip manufacturer in the world, and it's also a hub for some of the best talent in the tech space. China has reportedly started a campaign to poach Taiwanese tech talent to ramp up domestic chip manufacturing efforts.

As reported by CNBC, Taiwan's Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MIJB) said that Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co (SMIC) is "actively recruiting" Taiwanese talent by establishing an entity in Samoa "under the guise of foreign investment."

SMIC, China's biggest semiconductor manufacturing firm, has gained a reputation by producing 7nm chips for Huawei. Back in 2020, SMIC was blacklisted by the US. At the time, the US Commerce Department said it had found evidence of activities between SMIC and Chinese military-industrial companies (via Reuters).

MIJB reportedly started investigating the case in December 2024, finding at least 11 Chinese enterprises suspected of poaching Taiwanese tech talent.

"Chinese enterprises often disguise their identities through various means, including setting up operations under the guise of Taiwanese, overseas Chinese, or foreign-invested companies, while in reality being backed by Chinese capital, establishing unauthorized business locations in Taiwan without government approval, and using employment agencies to falsely assign employees to Taiwanese firm,"

Of course, this is not the first time a Chinese company has tried to poach Taiwanese talent. Huawei has already tried to hire TSMC employees by offering triple salaries (via Gizmochina).

Since the first terms of Donald Trump's presidency (from 2016 to 2020), the US government - under both Trump and Biden - has announced multiple rounds of restrictions on exporting high-tech chips, GPUs, and chip manufacturing components to China. The administration is now investigating whether DeepSeek has smuggled Nvidia GPUs to China.

Meanwhile, the former US Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, criticized efforts to hold back China's chip manufacturing segment and described it as a "fool's errand."