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How long until the office is closed as a result of PRC protestations?
I visited Taiwan recently and was shocked by the weird economics there. Rent, food, clothing, and labor are extremely cheap. Foreign goods and property are insanely expensive. It's clear there's wealth, as I saw several dozen rare BMWs and Audis, and some Lambos, Ferraris, Bentleys. But then I read that the average annual salary of a new university graduate is $11,000 USD. It's also a very friendly place to foreigner…
How long until the office is closed as a result of PRC protestations?
Tons of Chinese companies do business with Taiwan (Chinese smartphone makers and TSMC or Foxconn for example) without issue. China wants reunification, it's not like there's a full on blockade or anything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the end of the day, laws and authority are just a bunch of humans playing make believe with each other. It all comes down to enforcement. Without enforcement, laws and authority are meaningless. Take the USA and England as analogous to Taiwan and China. In the 1700s, England had a "One-England policy" and claimed authority over the US colonies. The US colonies disagreed. Some of the international community acknowl…
A key difference is that the governments of the British colonies in North America were officially installed by, and reported to, Britain. cf. the Taiwanese government, the KMT, which at one point controlled the mainland, but was pushed into exile on Taiwan by the communists. The existence of a free Taiwan threatens the legitimacy of the communist government on the mainland: the PRC, like most propaganda-fueled author…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
PRC can dream all they want but they have no authority on the island.
At the end of the day, laws and authority are just a bunch of humans playing make believe with each other. It all comes down to enforcement. Without enforcement, laws and authority are meaningless. Take the USA and England as analogous to Taiwan and China. In the 1700s, England had a "One-England policy" and claimed authority over the US colonies. The US colonies disagreed. Some of the international community acknowl…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the end of the day, laws and authority are just a bunch of humans playing make believe with each other. It all comes down to enforcement. Without enforcement, laws and authority are meaningless. Take the USA and England as analogous to Taiwan and China. In the 1700s, England had a "One-England policy" and claimed authority over the US colonies. The US colonies disagreed. Some of the international community acknowl…
A key difference is that the governments of the British colonies in North America were officially installed by, and reported to, Britain. cf. the Taiwanese government, the KMT, which at one point controlled the mainland, but was pushed into exile on Taiwan by the communists. The existence of a free Taiwan threatens the legitimacy of the communist government on the mainland: the PRC, like most propaganda-fueled author…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
PRC can dream all they want but they have no authority on the island.
Whether they have authority on the island or not, they have pull with Google.
>Last year, the project trained about 5,000 students in AI technology and 50,000 digital marketers. I feel like Taiwan represents a talent opportunity like no other. I dream of starting an engineering company there that is literally a clone of some upcoming business model, and doing nothing but capping the work week at 40 hours and guaranteeing 4 weeks vacation. I could snipe the best talent on hand in the country, w…
> I feel like Taiwan represents a talent opportunity like no other. Yup. When I was in Korea I met a few Taiwanese that my employer poached from Asus, HTC, Benq, ... The state of their tech scene seemed quite dire. They would easily double their salary in Korea, for a pretty similar CoL. Eventually most got fed up with the Korean work culture and left for even higher salaries in... mainland China!
I am concerned, though, that this is Google's way of getting around issues of not being able to operate with a free hand in China, i.e. it will serve as a platform for developing Chinese-language services and be ready to release them in the PRC when they can do so without attracting negative attention. There's some history of this -- in the 90s and 2000s it was a common strategy among global corporations to launch and iterate ideas and products in Taiwan before moving them over to China.
ETA:
Another more depressing assessment: Google is placing a bet on annexation, as the PRC has repeatedly insisted it will do by any means necessary (see "Xi Jinping Warns Taiwan That Unification Is the Goal and Force Is an Option," https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/world/asia/xi-jinping-tai...)
>Last year, the project trained about 5,000 students in AI technology and 50,000 digital marketers. I feel like Taiwan represents a talent opportunity like no other. I dream of starting an engineering company there that is literally a clone of some upcoming business model, and doing nothing but capping the work week at 40 hours and guaranteeing 4 weeks vacation. I could snipe the best talent on hand in the country, w…
> I feel like Taiwan represents a talent opportunity like no other. Yup. When I was in Korea I met a few Taiwanese that my employer poached from Asus, HTC, Benq, ... The state of their tech scene seemed quite dire. They would easily double their salary in Korea, for a pretty similar CoL. Eventually most got fed up with the Korean work culture and left for even higher salaries in... mainland China!