和硕董事长与崇越董事长建言台湾引进海外人才，属论坛政策评论无公司级交易催化

Pegatron chairman T.H. Tung and Topco Scientific founder J.W. Kuo called for Taiwan to recruit talent from overseas as the country faces intensifying industrial challenges. Speaking at a forum organized by the Global Views-Commonwealth Publishing Group on October 14, the two said talent shortages are more urgent than water or power shortages and urged companies to combine overseas hiring with AI and automation.

Drawing on his previous experience as minister of economic affairs, Kuo said Taiwan must improve systems for selecting, training, and retaining talent. Tung agreed that companies could recruit overseas white-collar and blue-collar workers while using AI and automation to improve efficiency.
Kuo stressed that talent development has become increasingly important as semiconductor and AI server supply chains expand overseas. He suggested that businesses could invite industry experts to teach employees or send workers to continuing education programs to gain new knowledge.
Taiwan is currently facing a declining birthrate and talent shortages, while resources are increasingly concentrated in the semiconductor and technology industries. Kuo said Taiwan cannot rely solely on developing domestic talent and should actively recruit promising people from overseas.
Kuo proposed bringing outstanding Southeast Asian students to Taiwan. Leveraging Taiwanese companies' factories and operations in Southeast Asia, the plan would provide scholarships for talented students from disadvantaged families to complete six years of undergraduate and graduate education in Taiwan before transitioning directly into employment.
He estimated that each student would require an investment of about NT$3 million (US$93,545) over six years. If the government and businesses shared the cost, he said, the overall expense would not be excessive.
Tung put forward a similar proposal for attracting overseas talent. He said population structure and talent supply fall within the scope of national and public policy, requiring long-term consideration of education and even immigration systems.
Although Tung acknowledged that a company cannot reverse the population decline on its own, he supported Kuo's proposal to recruit overseas workers in the short term, including both white-collar and blue-collar employees.
However, Tung cautioned that attracting overseas talent involves more than simply increasing headcount; it also involves social and cultural issues. He cited the US immigration culture, which has expanded the labor force while enriching the country's talent pool.
Many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, engineers, and CEOs come from different ethnic and national backgrounds, Tung said. US society's highly positive and open attitude toward talent is an area Taiwan needs to learn from.
In addition to designing effective systems for recruiting overseas talent, Taiwan must consider whether people from different backgrounds can develop their careers in the country while gaining social acceptance, integrating culturally, and helping build an inclusive environment.
Another solution is to adopt AI and automation to improve productivity and reduce reliance on labor. Tung said that, at a comparable revenue scale, his company's global workforce had declined from 200,000 people in the past to fewer than 50,000, primarily through extensive automation, standardization, and process improvements.
However, he warned that once the workforce falls below a certain level, further reductions become difficult. Automation is therefore not the only solution.
Beyond the potential displacement of talent resources caused by AI development, Tung observed that the distribution of global AI computing resources is likely to become more concentrated over the next few years, with the US and China expected to control most of the capacity.
Major chipmakers including Broadcom and Intel have recently said that funding and financing costs could become the biggest bottlenecks to AI expansion. Tung said AI development remains in a stage of heavy infrastructure investment, and its substantial capex will inevitably create short-term funding pressure, but this does not indicate that the AI industry's growth momentum is weakening.