Opening the semiconductor industry to Chinese investment without adequate safeguards would deepen Chinese influence and lead to a hollowing out of the industry, several academics said yesterday.
“China holds a knife in one hand and money in the other and then says to us: ‘You are my person and would you like money? Because otherwise I’ll knife you,’” Chang Shun-chih (張順志), a professor of electronics engineering at National Cheng Kung University. “However, many people only see the money and do not see the knife.”
Chang made the remarks at a joint press conference by several academics and the Economic Democracy Union to protest Minister of Economic Affairs John Deng’s (鄧振中) statement late last month that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government intends to open the sector to Chinese investment before his term expires in the May.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
His remarks were followed last week by the announcement that China’s Tsinghua Unigroup would seek to purchase stakes in Siliconware Precision Industries Co and MediaTek — two key semiconductor firms.
Chang said that IC designer MediaTek faces substantial pressure to agree to Chinese investment because of its exposure to the Chinese market, making it vulnerable to sanctions by the Beijing government, such as forbidding Chinese phone makers from using the Taiwanese company’s chips.
While Deng has said the government would implement safeguards to protect business secrets and prevent the local industry from being undermined if the investment ban is dropped, such promises are “wishful thinking,” with the government failing to provide specific measures of how they would be implemented, Chang said.
“The Chinese are not interested in playing a ‘win-win’ game with us in the IC sector. They are seeking to use the Chinese market to force us to allow them to invest. They will continue to use the same means to gradually take control of IC design companies to gain access to our technology,” he said, adding that Taiwanese firms would be hollowed out and cast aside as soon as Chinese investors master their technology.
“If they get a hold of operating authority, there is nothing you can do,” he said.
Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said that if Chinese firms were allowed to purchase stakes in IC companies, there would be no way to prevent “technological dialogue” between the firms, with Taiwanese firms likely to be required to provide training to Chinese workers.
Deng’s statements reflected overly broad executive discretion over the bounds of Chinese investment, he said, calling for the passage of a law similar to the Statute for Investment by Foreign Nationals (外國人投資條例) that requires major changes to receive legislative approval. Currently opening new sectors can be determined by executive fiat, he said.
A petition opposing the opening of the sector had attracted 246 signatures as of noon yesterday, including 80 from professors of electrical engineering or information related fields, the group said.
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