As competition in the global semiconductor industry intensifies, the chip competition between Taiwan and the mainland has gradually expanded from technology and manufacturing to the field of talent. Hsinchu, Taiwan, as the headquarters of TSMC, has become the focus of this talent war. Here, mainland companies, especially technology giants such as Huawei, have launched an unprecedented recruitment campaign for high-end semiconductor talents. According to a report by Le Monde in France, the competition for talent in the semiconductor field has become the core of a new round of competition between Taiwan and the mainland.

Choices and decisions of Taiwan's technical elites

Chloe Chen, a 43-year-old Taiwanese semiconductor expert, is one of the players in this talent war. As a microchip packaging expert, Chloe has received a large number of recruitment invitations from mainland technology companies, and there are many attractive salaries in the emails. However, Chloe chose to continue working for Taiwanese and American companies and rejected these high-paying positions from the mainland. She explained that accepting a job in the mainland may not only result in her no longer being able to obtain employment opportunities from Taiwanese or American companies, but may also face legal and security risks.

In recent years, the Taiwanese authorities have begun to investigate this high-paying recruitment campaign because some companies secretly attract Taiwanese semiconductor talents in the name of data analysis companies with the intention of serving the technological development of the mainland. The salaries offered by these companies are often three times the average level in Taiwan, which makes Taiwan's security departments pay special attention. Taiwan's Judicial Investigation Bureau has also strengthened its review of such recruitment to prevent trade secrets from flowing to competitors.

Chip competition under the background of US-China technology blockade

The semiconductor industry is of great significance to the global economy and national security, and the chip technology blockade between the United States and China has intensified the intensity of this competition. In 2020, TSMC stopped supplying chips to Huawei in response to the US ban, and ASML, the Dutch lithography machine giant, was also banned from exporting key equipment to China in 2023. Faced with these restrictions, the mainland relies more on technical talents to promote its own semiconductor research and development capabilities.

In the summer of 2023, during the visit of US Commerce Secretary Raymondo to China, Huawei released a mobile phone equipped with a 7-nanometer chip. Although this chip still has shortcomings in production efficiency and yield, it represents a breakthrough in the mainland's high-end chip manufacturing. Huawei handed over the production of the latest chip to Shanghai Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), which is a sign that the mainland is accelerating the independent production of high-tech chips. However, Taiwanese experts pointed out that SMIC's technology is still far from TSMC's most cutting-edge process, but through large-scale production, its technological progress is expected to accelerate.

Taiwan's geopolitical pressure and the globalization of production layout

Competition in the semiconductor field is not only a matter of technology and talent, geopolitics is also intensifying the game between the parties. Taiwan's semiconductor supply chain is becoming more and more complex, and the United States and Europe are also trying to diversify their dependence on Taiwan's chip supply in this context. TSMC decided to invest in a new factory in Arizona, USA, and received $6.6 billion in US government support. At the same time, Germany also invested 5 billion euros to build its own semiconductor factory to reduce its dependence on the Asian market in the future. These overseas layouts mark the gradual globalization of semiconductor production, and countries are also trying to ensure the independence of their respective supply chains.

However, Taiwan's local chip manufacturing industry faces severe talent challenges. Although companies such as TSMC offer generous salaries, the high-intensity work pressure in the chip field has discouraged many young engineers. With the diversification of the flow of technical talents, Taiwan has to further enhance its attractiveness to local engineers and strive to retain talents to maintain its technological leadership.

India becomes a talent training base for Taiwan

To ease the talent shortage, Taiwan has set its sights on India as a new source of talent. India has a large population and a large number of engineers and technical talents. TSMC and other Taiwanese semiconductor companies have frequently visited Indian universities to recruit graduates to fill the talent gap in the semiconductor industry. Suchandra Chakraborty, 37, is a typical representative. After receiving engineering education in Kolkata, India, she came to Hsinchu in 2010 to continue her studies and has now worked in the semiconductor field in Taiwan for nearly fifteen years.

She said that compared with the past, the number of Indian expatriates in Hsinchu has increased significantly, which is not only reflected in the personnel, but also in the changes in local living facilities - from the original one Indian restaurant to the current seven or eight, which shows that Indian talents are gradually increasing in Taiwan. The demand for Indian engineers by Taiwanese companies is still growing, and the interest of young Indians in overseas high-tech industries has also provided Taiwan with more sources of talent.

The future under talent competition: the game between technology and national interests

The current chip competition has surpassed the traditional competition in manufacturing capabilities and has gradually evolved into a multiple game of technology, geopolitics and talent. Under the background of the technological blockade imposed by the United States on the mainland, the mainland urgently needs more technical talents to enhance its independent semiconductor manufacturing capabilities. In order to maintain its technological advantages, Taiwan is also trying to retain key technical talents and even seeking global layout.

For the mainland, attracting Taiwanese chip talents can not only accelerate technological progress, but also reduce dependence on imports and gradually achieve self-sufficiency in the chip field. Taiwan hopes to gain more international support through its technological leadership to ensure national security and maintain an irreplaceable position in the global supply chain.

New focus in global competition

In today's increasingly fierce semiconductor competition, technical talents have become an important factor affecting the industrial landscape. The battle between Taiwan and the mainland over chips is a competition of technology on the surface, but in essence it is also a contest of national interests and strategies. In the future, as the demand for semiconductor self-sufficiency in various countries continues to increase, the distribution of the global chip market will become more complex.

This talent competition involves not only Taiwan and the mainland, but also other countries and regions. In the current era of globalization and rapid development of science and technology, how to attract and cultivate talents while retaining core technologies will become the key to determining the future semiconductor market landscape.