A Taiwanese technology expert moving to China to work for an integrated circuit (IC) talent incubator is likely to hurt Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, an official from the Allied Association for Science Park Industries said on Friday.
Association director Sam Lin (林錫銘) said that with China preparing to create its own semiconductor industry, he feared that Liu Chung-laung’s (劉炯朗) presence at the center in Jinjiang, Fujian Province, would hurt Taiwan’s competitiveness in the global market.
Xinhua news agency earlier this week reported that Liu, chairman of Taipei-based market advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) and the president of National Tsing Hua University from 1998 to 2002, is leading the center in Fujian.
A computer scientist, Liu is has close ties with Taiwan’s academic and industrial circles.
He is an independent director on the board of contract chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the second-largest contract chipmaker in Taiwan.
Liu would work with IC talent development organizations in Taiwan to help the Jinjiang center build a teaching team and bolster its training resources to turn it into a hub for training specialists for China’s semiconductor industry, Xinhua said.
The Jinjiang center opened on Wednesday, when the city hosted a forum on IC talent exchanges across the Taiwan Strait, it said.
It said the Jinjiang center is expected to train 12,600 specialists for the industry over the next 10 years.
Lin, who is also chief executive officer of Taiwan-based IC designer Weltrend Semiconductor Inc (偉詮電子), said the nation’s IC industry is suffering from a brain drain as Chinese companies lure Taiwanese experts with attractive compensation packages.
He urged the government to stem the talent outflow and protect the local IC sector.
In another prominent case of talent flight, UMC vice chairman Sun Shih-wei (孫世偉) earlier this year started working for Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd (清華紫光), a Chinese IC firm backed by Beijing.
Real estate agent and property developer JSL Construction & Development Co (愛山林) led the average compensation rankings among companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) last year, while contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) finished 14th. JSL Construction paid its employees total average compensation of NT$4.78 million (US$159,701), down 13.5 percent from a year earlier, but still ahead of the most profitable listed tech giants, including TSMC, TWSE data showed. Last year, the average compensation (which includes salary, overtime, bonuses and allowances) paid by TSMC rose 21.6 percent to reach about NT$3.33 million, lifting its ranking by 10 notches
SEASONAL WEAKNESS: The combined revenue of the top 10 foundries fell 5.4%, but rush orders and China’s subsidies partially offset slowing demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) further solidified its dominance in the global wafer foundry business in the first quarter of this year, remaining far ahead of its closest rival, Samsung Electronics Co, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. TSMC posted US$25.52 billion in sales in the January-to-March period, down 5 percent from the previous quarter, but its market share rose from 67.1 percent the previous quarter to 67.6 percent, TrendForce said in a report. While smartphone-related wafer shipments declined in the first quarter due to seasonal factors, solid demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) devices and urgent TV-related orders
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic fuel stations are this week to rise NT$0.2 and NT$0.3 per liter respectively, after international crude oil prices increased last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices last week snapped a two-week losing streak as the geopolitical situation between Russia and Ukraine turned increasingly tense, CPC said in a statement. News that some oil production facilities in Alberta, Canada, were shut down due to wildfires and that US-Iran nuclear talks made no progress also helped push oil prices to a significant weekly gain, Formosa said
MINERAL DIPLOMACY: The Chinese commerce ministry said it approved applications for the export of rare earths in a move that could help ease US-China trade tensions Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) is today to meet a US delegation for talks in the UK, Beijing announced on Saturday amid a fragile truce in the trade dispute between the two powers. He is to visit the UK from yesterday to Friday at the invitation of the British government, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. He and US representatives are to cochair the first meeting of the US-China economic and trade consultation mechanism, it said. US President Donald Trump on Friday announced that a new round of trade talks with China would start in London beginning today,
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