Over 45 percent of Taiwanese enterprises planning to invest in China will choose to recruit Chinese employees over Taiwanese, posing fierce competition for an estimated 340,000 Taiwanese college students scheduled to graduate this year, a local magazine survey found yesterday.
The survey -- conducted by Cheers magazine, a sister publication of CommonWealth magazine (天下雜誌) -- was sent out to 1,394 companies, of which 300 responded.
Traditional and high-tech industries were the most aggressive in expanding into China's markets, according to the survey.
The major purpose of recruiting local talent in China is for "their experience in areas, whereas cheap labor is no longer Taiwanese firms' biggest concern," said Isabella Wu (
Echoing Wu's view, Wang Chin-po (王俊博), president of Soft-World International Corp (智冠科技), said the gap in personnel costs across the Strait narrows when Taiwanese firms offer more cash in order to compete for the same talent pool in China.
Soft-World, one of Taiwan's largest game software companies, currently has about 570 employees worldwide with 200 in China. Programmers comprise nearly half of its workforce, with about 160 in Taiwan and another 100 in China.
With five years of experience operating in China, Paul Chou (
Chou, however, insisted that company policy requires maintaining a research and development (R&D) base in Taiwan, which still has the upper hand in R&D talent.
"For a period of five years China won't be able to replace Taiwan's R&D talent pool," Chou said, adding that Compal had 150 job openings for Taiwanese R&D talent in the first half of the year.
Drawing a comparison to workers across the Strait, Chou added that Chinese workers are, in general, more hard-working and career-motivated, and with better English comprehension than their Taiwanese counterparts. He also said that Chinese workers are catching up on their free trade experience and world perspective, in which Taiwanese workers currently excel.
Soft-World's Wang further pointed out that Chinese workers, however, show less loyalty to Taiwanese firms, saying "their hostility is obvious toward Taiwanese firms, which are treated as stepping stones by them."
Wang also said that Chinese workers often engage in power struggles, causing difficulties in human resources management and upsetting the harmony within a company.
He therefore said that he preferred to hire Taiwanese workers who often demonstrate their strength at crucial times though they are sometimes inactive in the workplace.
Unwilling to discuss potential future plans to move an eight-inch fab to China, the world's biggest made-to-order chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC,
Richard Pao (
He added that TSMC puts an emphasis on job seekers' working enthusiasm, creativity, professionalism and learning potentials.
The Cheers survey, in addition, found that job opportunities for sales representatives and quality-control inspectors are mostly offered in China while high-ranking management positions are still held by Taiwanese in China-based firms. But the survey also concluded that 63 percent of Taiwanese firms in China have hired Chinese to take over middle-level management positions.
"Localization is inevitable," Chou added.
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