Taiwan Professionals Lured Home : Business: More than half the 1,000 people with graduate degrees who work in the decade-old, government-run center formerly worked abroad.
C. T. Wu is back in Taiwan, leaving behind in the United States a promising career with leading companies, an $800,000 home in Maryland and a lifestyle he adored.
He gave it up to start his own high-technology company at the Science-Based Industrial Park in this gritty city about 45 miles southwest of Taipei. Wu and hundreds of other returning professionals are helping extend Taiwan’s economic miracle into the 21st Century.
Wu, 36, lived the American dream during 11 years in the United States, receiving a doctorate in communications and winning GTE’s highest technical achievement award for his work in satellites.
In 1988, he decided to return to Taiwan because lower labor costs and easier access to capital would help him start his own communications business.
“I’m an entrepreneur at heart,” Wu explained in the bare offices of his 6-month-old company, National Datacomm Corp., at the industrial park.
Among other fledgling entrepreneurs at the park is Henry H. Sun, chairman of 1 1/2-year-old Coast Hitech Corp. It produces microwave components for radar and missiles.
Sun, 57, said he worked for ITT Corp. in space defense before setting up Coast Hitech with two partners who also came from the United States.
He and the others view the company, in part, as a way to pass on their “knowledge and experience to the people in Taiwan,” Sun said.
The government-run science park, established a decade ago, entices entrepreneurs with tax holidays, duty exemptions and other incentives.
It has several representatives overseas, including one in the heart of California’s “Silicon Valley,” to help persuade Taiwan’s brightest to return home.
More than half the 1,000 people with graduate degrees who work in the science park formerly lived abroad. Klaus C. Wiemer, president of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., said he employs about 50 Taiwanese recruited from the United States.
“If it becomes known that I’m looking for a particular person like a quality control manager, then it’s only a matter of weeks before the resumes start rolling in by fax,” he said.
Wiemer, an American citizen whose company is a joint venture of the government and N.V. Philips of the Netherlands, said professionals were returning to Taiwan for several reasons.
Technology in the most advanced companies finally is reaching levels comparable to that of U.S. firms, so challenging jobs can now be found for top engineers, he said.
Initial salaries in Taiwan may be relatively low, but returning professionals can make a lot of money by acquiring stock in their new companies before they go public.
He also noted that “Chinese are family oriented, so many of the people who left 10 to 20 years ago see their parents getting very old and now they want to come back and be close.”
The homeward flow of talent is critical to the further development of Taiwan, an export-oriented powerhouse that is finding that many of its low-skill manufacturing industries no longer can compete with neighboring Asian countries that offer cheaper land and labor.
Experts say Taiwan soon will become the world’s fourth-largest manufacturer of semiconductors. Among more than 100 companies in the science park are 25 semiconductor firms and more than 30 others involved in computer technology.
The number of Taiwanese returning represents a fraction of the bright ones who go abroad. An average of 6,500 students leave for American universities annually and statistics indicate that more than half stay in the United States, the Education Ministry said..
A diplomat at the U.S. mission in Taipei said U.S. officials were not worried about highly skilled Taiwanese leaving American companies.
Wiemer said the drain of some top talent back to Taiwan, particularly given the intense global competition in high-tech industries, “certainly is going to hurt” the United States, “but at least the outflow is to a friendly nation.”
Many who have returned complain about the island’s increasing crime, deteriorating environment and turbulent society, so one of the government’s most difficult tasks may be to keep them from going abroad once again.
“It’s been very hard to adjust to life here,” Wu said. Is he glad to be back? “Not really.”
Sun wants to retire in the United States, where his wife and children still live, and Wu also plans to go back after five or six years.
“Mentality-wise, I’m 100% American,” said Wu, who prominently displays in his office a hand-drawn flag his colleagues gave him when he became a U.S. citizen. “I feel home when I’m back in the United States.”
