Several Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators have proposed amendments to the Trade Secrets Act (營業秘密法), as the problem of Chinese firms poaching Taiwanese talent and stealing core technology poses a real and serious threat to Taiwan’s national security. While the wording varies, the drafts focus on toughening penalties, defining industrial espionage and identifying hostile foreign forces.
At meetings of the legislature’s Economics Committee over the past few weeks, the National Security Bureau and the Mainland Affairs Council have expressed broad backing for the legislators’ drafts, but the Ministry of Economic Affairs appears reticent to amend the act, saying that it has been bolstered over the past few years and that breaches should be examined on a case-by-case basis.
On the surface, Taiwan does have the laws needed to protect companies’ trade secrets and intellectual property rights, and the point, as suggested by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, is to promote enforcement of the laws. In a report to the legislature in late March, the ministry said that it had collaborated with the Ministry of Justice to detect about 20 Chinese firms illegally recruiting Taiwanese talent in the past few months, while the number of cases involving contraventions of the act had increased from 92 in 2016 to 160 last year.
As the conviction rate is low and punishments tend to be light, such collaboration is not enough to prevent China from stealing proprietary information and technology from Taiwan, but merely puts a spotlight on the local talent and technology that continue to make their way to China. For example, while the penalty for stealing trade secrets is five years in prison under the Trade Secrets Act, the penalty under the US’ Economic Espionage Act is 10 years. Taiwan’s courts are also more conservative and its judges tend to have a narrow definition of stealing trade secrets, leading to a conviction rate of only 10 percent.
There have been calls for breaches of the act to be fast-tracked through the justice system, as China’s infiltration of the supply chain affects everything from stealing trade secrets to poaching talent. Beijing not only aims to damage Taiwan’s economic interests, but also to weaken the nation politically, limiting its global competitiveness.
The DPP legislators seem to believe that high-tech secrets, such as semiconductor technology, should be given the same protection as national security secrets, similar to practices in the US or South Korea, but this raises new issues.
First, it would be difficult to define which core technologies required the same protection as national security secrets, and to achieve a balance between firms conducting business and the government controlling exports or authorizing technology transfers.
Second, if trade secrets were protected as national security secrets, any country that could potentially threaten Taiwan’s leadership in industry would require government scrutiny, not just China.
Third, raising business secrets from an individual or corporate level to a national level would make it easier to stiffen the penalties for stealing trade secrets, but it would also raise the threshold of proof required, as well as the time needed to investigate trade secret cases.
Whether considered from a legal or a business point of view, the Trade Secrets Act is far from perfect. Given the international political and business environment, there is room for improvement.
Regardless of when or whether the lawmakers’ draft amendments become law — Cabinet members and ministries have proposed further discussion on their wording — the government must protect Taiwan’s national security and interests, whether by amending the Trade Secrets Act, the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例) or even the National Security Act (國家安全法).
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Ahead of US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) meeting today on the sidelines of the APEC summit in South Korea, an op-ed published in Time magazine last week maliciously called President William Lai (賴清德) a “reckless leader,” stirring skepticism in Taiwan about the US and fueling unease over the Trump-Xi talks. In line with his frequent criticism of the democratically elected ruling Democratic Progressive Party — which has stood up to China’s hostile military maneuvers and rejected Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework — Lyle Goldstein, Asia engagement director at the US think tank Defense Priorities, called
A large majority of Taiwanese favor strengthening national defense and oppose unification with China, according to the results of a survey by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC). In the poll, 81.8 percent of respondents disagreed with Beijing’s claim that “there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China,” MAC Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference on Thursday last week, adding that about 75 percent supported the creation of a “T-Dome” air defense system. President William Lai (賴清德) referred to such a system in his Double Ten National Day address, saying it would integrate air defenses into a
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
RSS