Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Taiwan is investigating 11 Chinese technology companies, including the country\u2019s leading chipmaker, on suspicion of illegally poaching its engineers, an indication of Beijing\u2019s reliance on its neighbour\u2019s world-leading semiconductor expertise.Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) set up a Samoa-registered entity to \u201cpoach talent in Taiwan as a fake foreign investor\u201d, Taiwan\u2019s Justice Ministry\u2019s Investigation Bureau (MJIB), the country\u2019s equivalent to the FBI, said on Friday.Taiwan screens investment from China and Chinese-owned entities more tightly than other foreign investment. But Chinese companies have long sought to circumvent these restrictions to invest in Taiwan through legal structures set up in third countries.Prosecutors on Friday said they raided offices of an SMIC affiliate and an affiliate of Shenzhen-based Ark Microelectronics and the homes of five suspects. Ark had hired more than 50 Taiwanese engineers since 2020, they said.Under Taiwanese law, it is illegal for Chinese companies to operate without government approval \u2014 which prosecutors said SMIC and Ark violated.The Chinese companies\u2019 recruiting activities have \u201chad a severe impact on the development of Taiwan\u2019s semiconductor industry,\u201d said the prosecutor\u2019s office in Hsinchu, the cradle of Taiwan\u2019s chip industry and home to the headquarters of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world\u2019s largest chipmaker.The Taiwanese engineers hired by the SMIC affiliate were developing technology for solid-state drives, devices that read and write data from memory chips, the prosecutors said.The investigation suggests that Taiwan is still struggling to stem the flow of chip brainpower to its hostile neighbour, despite introducing tougher laws and launching a five-year rolling crackdown.China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and threatens to take it by force if Taipei refuses unification indefinitely, but Taiwanese engineers have for decades played a crucial role in providing expertise to China\u2019s chip sector.Taiwan in 2020 added a section to its national security law \u2014 nicknamed \u201cthe TSMC provision\u201d \u2014 that explicitly bars Taiwanese citizens from transferring \u201ccritical technologies\u201d to entities from any foreign country or foreign hostile force, or any person acting on their behalf.It also makes it illegal for foreign entities to obtain such technologies by deceit. MJIB has conducted several waves of probes, resulting in more than 100 legal cases.Industry executives said the crackdown \u2014 combined with record compensation levels at Taiwanese companies thanks to the global semiconductor boom \u2014 had greatly reduced the brain drain.\u201cThere is a clear deterrent effect,\u201d said a senior executive at a Taiwanese chip company. \u201cNow, if you go to work for a chipmaker in China, you cannot come back \u2014 nobody here will hire you any more.\u201dBut one person with knowledge of the matter said SMIC had continued to hire engineers from TSMC and other Taiwanese contract chipmakers.The person said that although the engineers joining now were more junior than in the past, SMIC was still able to hire mid-level engineers.The person said Liang Mong Song, a former research and development director at TSMC who has been driving SMIC\u2019s pursuit of advanced chip manufacturing technology, played a crucial role in recruiting.Asked about the cases announced on Friday, TSMC would not confirm whether any of its employees were among those poached. A person familiar with the company said that the issue of losing employees to rival Chinese chipmakers had greatly receded in recent years.TSMC said its employee turnover rate was 3.5 per cent in 2024, \u201cwithin a healthy range\u201d of less than 10 per cent. \u201cWe have not discerned any alarming patterns in turnover that would point to systematic headhunting of TSMC employees,\u201d it said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Taiwan is investigating 11 Chinese technology companies, including the country\u2019s leading chipmaker, on suspicion of illegally poaching its engineers, an indication of Beijing\u2019s reliance on its<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-255953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}