31% of Taiwanese earn less than NT$30,000; 10% earn over NT$61,000 per month

If you call that an expat package, I guess many foreign companies would like to hire you.
It’s only obvious you get a bi-monthly return ticket, higher pay, free meals, a room at the factory dormitory. Mostly only top management gets a place in a gated community, car with driver.
Normal middle management, Taiwanese engineers/employees need to use the shared company cars with local driver to go outside the factory, for work or leisure.

There is a wide gulf between what Westerners call an “ex-pat” package and what Taiwanese call an “ex-pat” package. They both get them by their own definition, it’s just that the Taiwanese version in US dollar terms is not as big, yet when compared to their compatriots still stuck in Taiwan, they are still very very nice.
The package still involves living expenses (a less quality version, but one that Taiwanese are happy to take), plane tickets, and sometimes, if lucky, the education expenses for children.

That are the ones that rather take the family and live in China.

It’s not truly an expat package I suppose, since they are considered compatriots.

I think the biggest difference I have noticed is an extreme sense of optimism with their life in China and a great sense of pessimism towards the Taiwan government being able to accomplish much of anything. This was hammered home to me last night by my daughters former tutor who is now working in Shanghai. She loves her home of course, but appeared so incredibly happy that at her age she had so many opportunities available to her, especially with the paucity of opportunities available to her here. She had none of the concerns I had when I worked there (open internet etc.).

My friend was telling me yesterday that salaries for people sent over to teh Mainland are not half of what they used to be say 10 years ago. That says a lot, that even though Taiwanese are not getting the gilded golden trimmed cinnamon sprinkled expat deals, it is still better than here. Really depressing.

Worse: they are becoming pawns. How long before China just says Taiwanese need a special work permit?

Not sure what you mean, obviously one would expect to paid more in China than here. Why otherwise go?

Taiwanese owned factories that used to manufacture things only done by them now have some serious competition and are regularly hassled by customs.

It is more than here, but kids these days are being paid less to go than people before them.

Reminds me of that faithful Taiwan enterprise trope, where if they hired guy A for 50k, next one that replaces him after he quits/is fored is hereby offered 40k, and so on and so forth.

because going to China is no longer really a “hardship” job for Taiwanese, and because job prospects in Taiwan are not so good. More supply want to go to China = less premium in salary in China for Taiwanese. Simple economics.

Indeed. i also suspect the company owners are Taiwanese… and are more than aware of these factors… or worse, they are playing the field, ensuring their profits and lower and lower salaries.

A friend of mine choose to go work to Delhi instead for a Taiwanese company, he’s already returned after less than a year, never again he said.

That’s incredible. Of course expat packages will always be better than here or who else would want to go? If your packages aren’t generous, who else would want to go to places like India or Vietnam?

People looking for a change of scenery and new cultural experiences?

Are you seriously saying that expat package’s salaries are not significantly more than what one’d get at home? In which country do the companies offer such packages and who the f are taking them?

Yes absolutely true, in China there is a huge optimism for the future while Taiwan is mostly pessimism. That above all else is a major difference between the two countries. Ones optimism is actually partially at the expense of the other !

I also have a lot of questions about my family remaining in Taiwan because I don’t want my kids to have a pessimistic outlook on life and also I could do with more positive working environment (right now I’m doing well but the general working atmosphere is not great in Taiwan and it’s been like that for a very long time ).

But I would move to the homeland, Europe or somewhere else not China.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

And if you read their discussions online you’d see that they aren’t all optimistic. It’s quite a mixed bag.

Ask small retailers how well they re doing.

How are the small retailers going ?
If course its a similar situation for small and even large retailers everywhere getting killed by giant online retailers.

For the last three generations most Chinese have seen great advances in their living standards. This may continue for another generation or two. Also their shrinking family units allowed kids to enjoy more resources . I think their optimism is generally justified by the experience and their growing worldwide clout (but not all Chinese are optimistic if they value individual freedom of course…That took a big hit over the last year or so ).

The problem with Taiwan is that it is completely dependent on an unpredictable tri party relationship between the US and China , key factors are outside of its and our control. We can see China building it’s islands in South China Sea and continually shrinking Taiwan’s space and we also see how unpredictable US policy has become.
So it is very hard to be optimistic when the future is so uncertain. There’s a lot that can go wrong and not a whole lot that can go right at the moment.

You have a very weird definition of a generation.

The exact same thing happened here earlier and look where we are at. Lol.

In my albeit limited experience, the work environment in China, in certain industries is superior to what I have seen here.