Taiwan Warns China Is Targeting Chip Talent as Opposition Seeks a Peace Opening

Taiwan’s National Security Bureau said China is trying to obtain the island’s advanced chip technology and talent, while Taiwan opposition leader Cheng Li-wun traveled in China calling for peace and lower military tension.

The two developments landed in the same news cycle but pointed in opposite directions. One came from Taiwan’s top security agency, which said Beijing was using indirect channels to poach talent, acquire technology and procure controlled goods linked to semiconductors and artificial intelligence. The other came from Shanghai, where Cheng said “birds, not missiles” should fly in the skies.

According to a report reviewed by Reuters and republished by Insurance Journal, the bureau told lawmakers that China was trying to lure Taiwan’s high-tech industries, including AI and semiconductors, to establish or keep operations in China. The report said the effort was aimed at obtaining advanced-process chips and other core technologies to break through what it called international technological containment.

Taiwan sits at the center of that contest. The island is home to TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a key supplier to companies including Nvidia and Apple, according to the report. That makes talent recruitment, technology leakage and research partnerships questions of national security as well as industrial policy.

The bureau said China was also expected to use hybrid methods to interfere in Taiwan’s year-end local elections, including deepfakes and fake opinion polls. It reported more than 170 million intrusion attempts against Taiwan’s Government Service Network in the first quarter of the year and said Beijing could be laying groundwork for intelligence collection, surveillance and data theft.

Military pressure has continued alongside the cyber and talent contest. The bureau said more than 420 Chinese military aircraft were detected operating around Taiwan in the first quarter and that Chinese naval vessels took part in 10 joint combat readiness patrols.

Against that backdrop, Cheng’s visit to China drew immediate scrutiny in Taipei. Reuters, in a Yahoo republication, reported that Cheng said at Shanghai’s Yangshan Port that “what should fly in the sky are birds, not missiles” and “what should swim in the water are fish, not warships.” She described the trip as a peace mission aimed at reducing tension.

Lawmakers from Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party criticized Cheng’s Kuomintang for skipping talks in parliament on stalled plans to spend an extra $40 billion on defense, according to the Reuters report. The KMT said the visit had no connection to the special defense budget and that it supported defense spending but would not sign “blank cheques.”

The political split reflects a broader divide in how the Taiwan story is told. In Beijing, outreach by opposition figures can be framed as proof that dialogue is still possible if Taipei accepts China’s terms. In Taipei’s security bureaucracy, the same period is being documented as one of expanding hybrid pressure, cyber intrusion and attempts to pull semiconductor know-how across the strait.

Neither frame cancels the other. Taiwan can face intensified technology pressure while some politicians seek a lower temperature. But the contrast matters because semiconductors have become one of the clearest points where diplomacy, industrial power and security are fused.

The bureau’s warning suggests Taiwan sees the contest moving beyond factory investment or trade restrictions. It is about people, designs, procurement channels and election narratives. Those are harder to police than a customs list and easier to hide inside normal commercial activity.

For global technology companies, the implications are practical. Any successful transfer of Taiwanese talent or process knowledge would affect supply resilience, export-control policy and the balance of advanced chip manufacturing in Asia. For Taiwanese voters, the question is more immediate: whether promises of lower tension can be separated from the pressure tactics the government says are already under way.

The next markers will arrive before the end of the year. Lawmakers in Taipei still have to decide what happens to the additional defense budget, and Taiwan’s local elections will provide the test case for the deepfake and influence warnings set out in the security bureau report.