A portion of Taiwanese society, provoked by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), has voiced intense opposition to Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han’s (洪申翰) announcement early last month that 1,000 Indian workers could arrive as part of a pilot program of a bilateral agreement with India to bolster Taiwan’s labor force.
The central argument of opponents of the program rests on three pillars.
First, media coverage of crimes against women in India has created a perception that Indian workers would pose a threat to women in Taiwan.
Second, the workers would further compound the issue of foreign workers breaking their contracts while living in Taiwan.
Third, some are concerned that Indians would not adapt to Taiwanese culture and language as well as Southeast Asian workers do.
Such apprehensions, coupled with a limited understanding of Indian culture among Taiwanese, have attracted substantial public attention to the labor agreement.
However, before drawing conclusions about the deal, Taiwanese should understand a few facts about Indians.
First, Indian civilization dates back more than 6,000 years, and India has developed strict laws to protect women’s rights and liberties. More importantly, large numbers of men and women work for Taiwanese companies in India without major reported incidents. Meanwhile, the number of Taiwanese companies operating in India has increased to more than 200.
Second, the presence of 6,000 Indians in Taiwan living peacefully with Taiwanese speaks volumes about their commitment to respecting Taiwan’s legal and social norms.
Third, Indians are a major pillar of the world economy, and India has signed similar agreements with other countries including Gulf Cooperation Council member states. Such labor mobility partnership agreements have also been signed with Denmark, Japan, Portugal, Mauritius, Israel, France and other countries. There is no clear public record of Indian workers posing significant threats to people in those nations. The Indian diaspora has emerged as a major source of strength between India and those countries.
Taiwanese should judge the conduct of Indians based on facts and not misinformation.
Additionally, the labor agreement does not mean that the government would force companies to hire Indians. Taiwanese companies could hire Indian workers based on need.
A major hurdle that the two sides face in expanding cooperation is the limited knowledge they have of each other. With an increasing presence of Indian workers in Taiwan, a new ecosystem of cooperation and a better understanding of each other would emerge.
The agreement has the potential to create Mandarin-English exchanges that would expand the countries’ access to each other’s markets. It would have a positive impact on people-to-people engagement, benefiting tourism on both sides. While the agreement would enable skilled and semiskilled workers to find job opportunities in Taiwan, Taiwan would in turn be able to address a labor shortage and bolster its economic growth.
Aware of the potential the agreement has to bring Taiwan and India closer, China has sought to spread misinformation about the agreement and thereby derail the trajectory of cooperation between the two democracies.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) regime has been critical of the labor agreement between Taiwan and India since its inception in 2024. In this context, KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) visit to China last month provided Xi with an opportunity to use the KMT to weaken Taiwan-India ties.
As the primary opponents of the labor agreement, KMT members, in the name of raising concerns about the deal, have brazenly tried to project India as an uncivilized country with no respect for the safety and security of women. At the same time, incidents of foreign workers absconding from their contracted jobs have been used as a pretext to project Indians as likely to bail from their positions.
It has become clear that by spreading misinformation about the agreement that China wants to derail Taiwan-India relations. While Taiwan must take measures to address loopholes in its labor system, it also needs to send a strong message that it would fortify ties with India. Any deviation from that would only embolden China to become more aggressive toward Taiwan.
Sumit Kumar is a Ministry of Foreign Affairs visiting fellow at National Chengchi University and an assistant professor in Delhi University’s Department of Political Science.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
After Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, most headlines referred to her as the leader of the opposition in Taiwan. Is she really, though? Being the chairwoman of the KMT does not automatically translate into being the leader of the opposition in the sense that most foreign readers would understand it. “Leader of the opposition” is a very British term. It applies to the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, and to some extent, to other democracies. If you look at the UK right now, Conservative Party head Kemi Badenoch is
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
RSS