A start-up incubator on the outskirts of Shanghai is laying out sweeteners for budding entrepreneurs: free office space, subsidized housing, tax breaks and in some cases cash of up to 200,000 yuan (US$31,800).
The main condition? Be from Taiwan.
The center, formally called the Jinshan Cross Strait Youth Entrepreneurship Base, is part of the new face of China’s approach toward Taiwan.
More than 50 such bases have sprung up over the past three years across the country, attracting scores of Taiwanese start-ups and their young founders.
For China, young Taiwanese are seen as a key demographic to win over, but Taiwan’s government is viewing the success of the incubators and other programs with concern.
For years, Beijing’s policies toward Taiwan have focused on improving ties with traditional businesses, which still continue.
However, analysts and the Taiwanese government say that the Sunflower movement protests in 2014 over a trade pact with China caught Beijing’s attention.
“Before 2015, the Chinese mainland government targeted mainly commercial or business interests in Taiwan, but after the Sunflower movement, they shifted their focus to winning the hearts of the younger people, because they see them as the future and they see them as the biggest destructive force,” said Zhang Zhexin (張哲馨), a research fellow on Taiwan issues at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.
There are at least 53 incubators across China, including in cities such as Deyang in Sichuan Province and Shenyang in the nation’s northeastern rust belt, according to a list on China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Web site.
The Jinshan Cross-Strait Youth Entrepreneurship Base is in an office block in the heart of a sprawling industrial zone. It is styled like a Silicon Valley start-up, with brightly colored walls, rows of vacant computer desks and posters describing companies working there.
“We want to be a window to young Taiwanese to help them understand the mainland,” said Dong Ji, deputy Chinese Communist Party committee secretary of the industrial zone, which spent about 5 million yuan to set up the center in 2015.
Although the centers are open to Chinese and foreign companies, they offer the most financial incentives to those from Taiwan, he said.
The facility outside Shanghai is host to 165 projects, 40 of which are Taiwanese. It aims to increase this number to 100 by next year.
The Jinshan government — which also sees the incubator as an opportunity to bring young talent into the industrial zone — finances the start-ups itself and has given companies 30,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan in cash support, he said, adding that some have also received other support worth 500,000 yuan, such as subsidies and tax breaks.
No conditions are placed on companies interested in registering at the incubator, he added.
“We are working hard for the cross-strait relationship and Taiwanese youth who come here to start businesses to create a better environment for them to live and be entrepreneurs,” he said.
Such efforts in China come as Taiwan is seeing talented workers leave the country amid stagnant wages and economic growth that has lagged behind that of its neighbors. Workers in the tech industry — its strongest sector — are also being lured to China by higher pay.
Taiwanese Andy Yang, 27, was one of those who went abroad. He in 2015 moved to Shanghai to set up an education technology company, Bridge+, with four partners.
“I looked at some opportunities in Taiwan, but felt that the difference between the two markets was very big,” he said. “Our mainland compatriots are also very curious about Taiwanese people and have in terms of government policies given us many opportunities, so I came.”
For virtual reality company Vactor Digital chief executive Wu Chung-hsin, the Jinshan center has not only sponsored him, but has given him business. It has commissioned his company to outfit a 40m2 virtual reality exhibition center that is to showcase the area’s tourist attractions.
“I would not be able to get these sorts of conditions in Taiwan. I asked, but in reality I was advised that what I could get was not as good,” he said.
Other policies also focus on young Taiwanese. In July last year, the Chinese Ministry of Education published a directive on its Web site asking its universities to relax entrance requirements for Taiwanese students.
These efforts by China have not gone unnoticed in Taiwan.
Taiwan Solidarity Union publicity department deputy director Chen Chia-lin (陳嘉霖) in September last year wrote in an editorial in the Taipei Times that the start-up incubators aimed to “pull the rug from under the government’s feet.”
The government of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) sees mixed messages in China’s offers to young Taiwanese.
“As different government agencies in China might have different and sometimes inconsistent strategies toward Taiwan, we are closely watching the development of Beijing’s Taiwan policy,” said a Taiwanese official who declined to be named.
The Mainland Affairs Council warned of the risks and challenges of seeking opportunities in China.
“Taiwan is a free, democratic, pluralistic and open society. There are very big differences in the political, economic, societal and systemic aspects between the two sides,” it said in a statement.
Overall, it is unclear whether China’s policies are having a broad effect on Taiwanese attitudes.
The government has been trying to grow support for its young companies through moves such as earmarking US$3.3 billion for a start-up fund in September last year.
Daniel, a Taiwanese who last year registered his biotechnology start-up in Shanghai, said he launched his business in China because of the market opportunity, but was wary of accepting help from cross-strait incubators.
“You can be reduced to becoming a political tool,” he said, declining to give his full name because of cross-strait sensitivities. “If you take their benefits, there may be some sort of conditions later. You may lack some sort of freedom, or they may ask something of you.”
Others, like 33-year-old Chiu Yi-chen, who last year expanded her nail foil sticker business, Miss Behua, to China and is receiving support from the Jinshan incubator, said Taiwanese entrepreneurs like her must be practical.
“On the political situation, the ordinary people still have to make a living. I also tend to say that I’m focused on my own personal life; let’s leave political matters” for others to worry about, she said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the