Over the past few days, Time magazine as well as Agence France-Presse have reported on the phenomenon of an increasing number of young Taiwanese preferring to work in China. This is nothing new, as Taiwanese have been looking to China for business opportunities for decades.
However, as salaries and opportunities in Taiwan continue to stagnate, this number will only increase, despite increasing cross-strait tensions and an ever-growing and maturing sense of Taiwanese identity.
Why bring this up now? Both articles cite an uptick in China’s various programs and incentives to lure Taiwanese talent. Yes, there are worries that Taiwanese could abandon their loyalty and political ideals once in China, but what happens to them once they are on the other side of the Taiwan Strait is beyond Taipei’s control.
Political ideology does not put food on the table, nor does it advance careers. However, you can work in China without compromising your beliefs — just do not talk about them in public. For many, that is not too steep a price to pay for a better future.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Labor has approved raising the monthly minimum wage from NT$21,009 to NT$22,000. That will help quite a few people, but it will not help much with Taiwan’s overall salary problem. Those looking to China are not the ones earning minimum wage, they are the ones who slave for long hours in local companies making a “livable” salary, but with little hope of buying a house or even raising a family.
On the flip side, people making NT$30,000 per month will likely remain at that salary level, and companies might even be tempted to offer less money to prospective mid-level employees to compensate for the increased minimum wages they have to dole out. They might even raise the prices of their products and services, rendering the wage increase meaningless.
The government can do its part to create higher-paying and more inspiring jobs in various industries, but the problem is not the lack of jobs — the heart of the problem lies within the nation’s corporate culture. For example, with even such a tiny proposed increase in the minimum wage, corporate representatives had pushed for even less. They walked out of the talks and complained afterward that they were being treated like automated teller machines, disregarding the fact that starting wages have been stagnant for many years. It is clear that things cannot stay the same if Taiwan wants to have any hope of saving its economy.
This is a corporate culture that tries to squeeze as much as it can out of its workers while giving them as little as possible, completely disregarding the fact that happier workers lead to greater productivity. It is a culture that is often riddled with bureaucracy and values seniority over ability; one that only looks at short-term gains, disregarding the long-term future of the company and its workers.
There are many ways to go about making a company more productive and efficient while avoiding the near-exploitation of its workers. For example, companies could try to inspire their workers or give them incentives to work harder and more efficiently. A positive work environment where people are rewarded will attract and retain more talented, young employees, who are the key to propelling an organization forward.
Furthermore, higher salaries mean more purchasing power, which is good for the nation’s economy in the long run, and businesses will also benefit. By no means will this make Taiwan as attractive as China as far as money and opportunities go, but not everyone prefers to live in China.
A change in corporate culture will give some young people at least one more reason to stay.
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, the largest naval exercise in the region, are aimed at deepening international collaboration and interaction while strengthening tactical capabilities and flexibility in tackling maritime crises. China was invited to participate in RIMPAC in 2014 and 2016, but it was excluded this year. The underlying reason is that Beijing’s ambitions of regional expansion and challenging the international order have raised global concern. The world has made clear its suspicions of China, and its exclusion from RIMPAC this year will bring about a sea change in years to come. The purpose of excluding China is primarily
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the