Taiwanese talent flow

Hi - we are a group of MBA students in Singapore conducting a study on Taiwanese talent flow and migration. We were in Taipei 2 weeks ago as part of the study. Our study includes a survey on the current migration/working overseas trends

If you or any of your friends could spare 5 minutes to fill in this survey we would really appreciate it.

The on-line survey can be found here:
http://www.geocities.com/yckbgill/taiwansurvey.html

thanks !

You might be interested in reading a very good article in the Taipaid Times today, Tuesday, July 23, page 8, I think, on the editorial page by a local Taiwanese writer, a city council mamber from Tainan it says he is, about emigration and etc.

www.taipeitimes.com

the article begins like this:

Taiwanese have an emigration complex

By Wang Sumei 王淑美

Last week one of my colleagues decided to quit and
move to the US. Everybody in the office felt envious
yet they threw a farewell party for her. Earlier this
month one of my junior-school classmates got married
and invited me to the wedding. He left Taiwan when he
was 15 and the wedding was also a ceremony to
celebrate his becoming a permanent US resident.
I am always wondering why the Taiwanese admire the US
so much? Is it because we are economically poor, or
afraid of a possible war between Taiwan and China? Is
the lack of a sense of security embedded in our
culture?

Well, it might seem a silly point but I have a serious argument behind it…

Perhaps everyone wants to leave Taiwan because it puts barriers on the importation of chocolate. After all, who would want to live in a country where you cannot get as much high quality “feel good food” as you want. Yes, you can get some, but unbelievably there are many retrictions on what foreign sweet manufacturers can do in Taiwan. And why? To protect the obviously strategically important domestic sweets producers…

And as with chocolate, so with many other goods…

Why does Taiwan rank among the most expensive cities in the world?

Not because of the demand to live there (which is the case in Hong Kong for example.) For in Taiwan, even the locals want to leave.

But because of the scarcity of goods and services in the domestic market. If you want to buy one of the few bottles of champagne, or five-star hotel rooms, or almost any foreign agricultural product, then you have to pay up for it, because they are relatively scarce.

So… the answer to the pleading of the author of the Taipei Times article is to open up a bit more… pursue policies that will increase the goods and services available to Taiwanese. Don’t force them to save and force them to export all their goods… let them live a little.

Then… THEY MIGHT NOT WANT TO LEAVE!!!