Prosecutors this week began investigating nine Chinese companies suspected of poaching high-tech talent in Taiwan, the Investigation Bureau said on Friday.
Many of the companies are receiving funds from China’s state-owned investment fund, national academy or a chip conglomerate, the bureau said.
The companies being probed include Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (長江存儲), Jiangsu Cnano Technology Co (江蘇天奈), Beijing Tenafe Electronic Technology Co (北京特納飛) and Synaptics Hong Kong (新思國際), which are suspected of either conducting business activities or establishing local branches illegally in Taiwan, the bureau said.
Photo courtesy of the Investigation Bureau
Legally, no individual or institution from China may directly engage in any investment activity or make investments in Taiwan via a third party in another country without the government’s permission.
The companies are suspected of portraying themselves as foreign or Taiwanese entities, and using overseas accounts to cover their operating costs in Taiwan, including staff salaries, the bureau said.
They are suspected of poaching high-tech workers who specialized in DRAM, flash, solid-state drive and artificial intelligence chips, it said.
Many firms received funding from the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, the Chinese Academy of Sciences or Tsinghua Unigroup Co, China’s largest chip company, the bureau said.
For example, the companies that Tsinghua Unigroup invested in have been providing chips and data to the People’s Liberation Army and Huawei Technologies Co for the joint battle management system known as C4ISR — command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, it said.
Prosecutors are investigating whether the companies have violated the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the bureau said.
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