https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Te...-s-crypto-chip-king-of-poaching-100-engineers Prosecutors' claims over Bitmain activity come as Beijing hosts NPC Bitmain Technologies, the world's leading cryptocurrency mining chip developer, is alleged by Taiwanese prosecutors to have illegally poached engineers. © Reuters LAULY LI and CHENG TING-FANG, Nikkei staff writersMarch 9, 2021 TAIPEI -- Taiwanese prosecutors said China's Bitmain Technologies, the world's leading cryptocurrency mining chip developer, has allegedly illegally poached more than 100 engineers in Taiwan in a bid to boost its AI prowess. The New Taipei Prosecutors Office on Tuesday launched a probe at seven locations in New Taipei City and Hsinchu, the heart of Taiwan's semiconductor industry, and summoned nearly 20 persons of interest for questioning. Lists of employees, salary information, employment contracts, laptops and smartphones at two chip design companies -- IC Link Limited Company and WiseCore -- were taken back to the prosecutors office for further investigation. The investigation comes as Beijing hosts the National People's Congress. Semiconductors have been touted at the annual meeting of the country's parliament as key to China's economic development. China has been aggressively boosting its own chip industry, a sector caught in the crossfire of Washington-Beijing tech tensions. Taiwan has the world's second-largest chip industry by revenue after the U.S., and its high-level chip engineers have long been targets for Chinese companies seeking to advance the country's semiconductor technologies. The prosecutors' preliminary investigation showed Bitmain allegedly first lured a senior engineer to work for a newly established Chinese company as a chairman in China, and asked the person to persuade former colleagues to follow. Bitman later set up two companies disguised as foreign investments in Taiwan to poach talent, the prosecutors said. "We discovered that Bitmain has been poaching Taiwanese research and development talent to speed up its efforts on artificial intelligence chip capability by illegally setting up companies in Taiwan," a spokeswoman of the New Taipei Prosecutors Office told Nikkei Asia. "The newly established companies served a headhunting purpose and the timespan of what Bitmain did dates back to 2018." At least 100 Taiwanese chip engineers have been poached and "there could be more" as the investigation is ongoing and the questioning of these people has just started, the spokeswoman said. "So far, no evidence of trade secrets leakages have been found." Bitmain has not yet responded to Nikkei Asia's request for comment. Bitmain is the world's leading cryptocurrency mining chip developer, and has also ventured into designing AI chips to power smart devices, supercomputers and servers, according to its website. Beijing has pledged to be the global AI leader by 2030. Like many chip developers across the globe, Bitmain relies on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's biggest contract chipmaker, and others for chip production. Under the current regulations of the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area, Chinese investors are not allowed to put money into Taiwan's chip design sector as it is crucial for national security. Chinese chip companies are also not permitted to set up subsidiaries on the democratic-ruled island. Those who violate the rules can face up to one-year jail time or a fine of 150,000 New Taiwan dollars ($5,305). Lawyers told Nikkei Asia that prosecutors could also charge Bitmain's executives with forgery because they filed papers to set up a business in Taiwan without properly disclosing their origin.
And another example of China's cheating, lying, and overall deception to reach its goals. The same player who has stubbornly refused to play by the rules for decades. Call me racist but I will not ever do business with Chinese again. I just can't trust this culture and it's people. I buy non Chinese made products whenever I can even if I need to pay a premium. Why is the rest of the world still so soft on China. We should be hanging the perpetrators. 5k fines lol. Jail those cheating mainland assholes in Taiwan for a year and treat them exactly as badly as the fucking communists treat the 2 Canadians in jail.
you are too quick to judge as that is the easy card to play. You have no idea what he is talking about. The west fell under the greed spell. I was even part of it. Now many have owken to Chinas unfair practices , they make their own rules and now are happy to be quite seperate from the rest of the world. So be it. Lessons learnt all round. racist you say ? so you have no shadow ? you dont judge ? you feel superior ? well time to reflect yourself and recognise and accept you have darker sides to that easily project onto an anotimatic target...so is that racism ? an inner world of racism ? in the end this is symantics.
So this is how China's strategy to become more self-reliant in high technology, by poaching brain talent from other countries, LOL since it's being caught for stealing intelligent properties, forcing technology transfer, hacking and committing corporate espionage. US needs to have better security measures and better strategies to counter this since Taiwan is located so close to China and it shares so much cultural similarity with mainland China not to mention China's got $$, all from globalization. I mean it's not enough to just not selling chips to China when China can just poach people who can make chips from other countries.
LOL volpunter. You think China cares about you? LOL. Dumb german. An example of Germany's murdering, scheming, and overall brutality to reach its goals. The same country who has put into power the Nazi party. Call me racist but I will not ever buy German products again. I just can't trust this culture and it's people. I buy non German made products whenever I can even if I need to pay a premium. Why is the rest of the world still so soft on Germany for it's actions against the Jews. Jail those neo nazis for a year and treat them exactly as badly as the fucking nazis treated the Jews in the concentration camps.
I called him racist because he asked. I called him racist because from what appears to be a personal negative experience, he now "can't trust the culture and its people"... yup, in my book that's simpleton racism. So why can't a company poach labor from other countries? We, American corporations and education system, have been doing this for multi decades. Look at the names of our best and brightest in corporate or education and good chance is that 80% are talents from abroad who came to the promised land, and I don't mean Israel. I'd say America is the king of poachers! We've marketed ourselves that way since WW2, until the white supremacist nationalist made a mockery of our country to the world. A point that eludes you all is that to be poached, one must be willing to go or it's called kidnapping. I offer you an incentive, you take it, you're poached. The real issue I have is with those who, for cash and glory, are willing to leave Taiwan for China, the evil communist empire. But, isn't greed the most humans of traits promoted by us capitalists?
China boycotts Japanese products from time to time whenever it suits its political agenda due to the historically negative experience, is China being a racist? China boycotted South Korean products and banned all South Korean artists from performing in China, cancelled all South Korean shows from all of its TV stations just because South Korea agreed to US installing a surveillance system. Is that racism? Chinese attacks East-Indian businesses operating in China because of China-India border conflicts that are going on right now. Is China being a racist? China's poaching is a form of stealing, not of intelligence property this time, but of brain talent because it's targetted to a particular industry and a particular sector and a particular group of people. I didn't say it can't but what it's doing is still poaching. Western countries like US are different. When they accept people from abroad, they accept everybody in an open immigration policy. It's written on the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" It didn't say "Give me the engineers only from the chip-making manufacturing companies so I don't have to lift a finger to steal technologies that other countries have invested time and money in researching and developing". The moment that China poaches janitors from those chip-making manufacturing plants and offer them all kinds of benefits and permanent residency and citizenship, I will stop labeling China as poachers. Tell that to your spymaster in China. And btw I didn't ask you why you called somebody a racist in the first place so I dunno why you chose to explain to me why you called somebody a racist. You need to brush up on your trolling skill too besides your English.